Terriers in Charge: Meet Madison Miranda, President of BU's Puerto Rican Student Association

When Madison Miranda (Questrom’24) arrived at BU from her home in Puerto Rico for her freshman year, she was homesick for the food and culture she had grown up with. Her family had recently relocated from Long Island to Aguadilla, a town on the northwest coast of Puerto Rico, where they now run a jet ski rental company. Prior to that, they would gather with relatives in the New York area for meals featuring well-loved Puerto Rican dishes and travel into Manhattan for the annual Puerto Rican Day Parade.

Miranda’s freshman year coincided with the height of the COVID pandemic, when many students were taking classes via Zoom. She found it hard to meet other students, but during Splash, BU’s annual student club fair, she discovered BU’s Puerto Rican Student Association [https://bu.campuslabs.com/engage/organization/puerto-rican-student-association] (PRSA) and immediately signed up. The club is open to any student interested in learning about Puerto Rican culture, and it seeks to foster a sense of community among students with Puerto Rican heritage (whether in the United States or elsewhere) through on-campus social events and off-campus outings.

“I missed the food I’d grown up with. I missed the weather in Puerto Rico and the beaches,” Miranda says, recalling her first year on campus. “It was hard getting used to the cold weather and I wanted to find others here at BU who understood what I was going through.”

Because she wanted to make sure the club was creating and planning events, she joined the club’s E-board as treasurer sophomore year. Now, she’s president of the club, which currently has approximately 40 members.

“It’s made me happy to be able to provide opportunities for Puerto Rican students to come together, relax, and share our cultural heritage,” Miranda says, and that the club is able to provide members with a sense of home, when home is often very far away.

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