By Michael Ahn ’22
Ms. Arriola has worked at Bellarmine for nine years and is currently the diversity director. After chairing her first Justice Summit on immigration, Ms. Arriola has made an effort to present for every summit whenever she can.
She said that she “feels very strongly about supporting the work at the Justice Summit.”
Ms. Arriola’s presentation examines the way hip-hop music interacts with the broader cultural landscape, and especially how it influences young men in unanticipated, but very real ways.
For this year’s Justice Summit on gender, Ms. Arriola will talk about the social messages behind the lyrics of hip-hop, and how we should consider those messages. Ms. Arriola states that while hip-hop music can have wonderful musicality, the messages behind the lyrics are at times damaging.
Ms. Arriola added on that she will be presenting “on Hip Hop music and culture, and how that informs constructions of masculinity.”
She explained why the subject was meaningful to her, saying that “hip hop can be musically nourishing, but lyrically destructive. We could love the music, and that there’s nothing wrong with the genre itself, but sometimes you take a step back and ask, ‘is this what we really believe?'”