The following feature story appeared in the campus publication Mosaic in March, 2001.

A campus leader with empathy

In the earliest days of this semester, Charles K. Botts III ’01 met with his independent study adviser, Professor of Religion Leslie G. Desmangles, to talk about his interest in the 18th century emergence of “Maroon societies,” Caribbean enclaves of rebel slaves who had escaped from plantations.  Botts was so excited about his topic that he couldn’t wait to begin, according to Desmangles.  Delving into the considerable resources of the Watkinson Library, Botts in the first week found a transcript from the Jamaica Congress of Assembly dating back to 1795–96. It not only offered a detailed account of the island’s nascent Maroon society, but also gave insight into how the Jamaican government and British authorities reacted to the community of former slaves, which they perceived as problematic and threatening.

Botts is an international studies major with a concentration in Latin America and the Caribbean, and this senior exercise incorporates some of his interdisciplinary knowledge of the region.  It also ties in with his particular interest in religion since, Botts notes, the practice of religion was a form of rebellion among the Maroon populations.  “I’m a Christian myself, but I’m interested in the study and philosophy of religion all over the globe,” he says.  “I really want to know:  ‘How significant a role does religion play in cultures?’”

An empathetic leader
Desmangles points out that while Botts’s independent project shows his intellectual motivations, it also reveals another personal quality that has served Botts well throughout his Trinity career: empathy.  In his academic life, Botts has employed this empathy as a powerful tool for understanding such issues as the plight of colonized and enslaved people.  In his residential life at Trinity, Botts’s empathy has been his chief asset as a campus leader.  “Students of color look upon him as a model, particularly because he is so socially engaged and giving toward others,” Desmangles says.  President of Imani, the black student union, during his sophomore and junior years, Botts has been an active member of the Multicultural Affairs Council.  He also has served for three years as a class representative on the Student Government Association, working alongside trustees on the Board’s Student Life Committee and alongside faculty members on the Curriculum Committee.  Meanwhile, he has managed to meet the demands of playing football all four years while keeping up with academics.

Botts is both a resident assistant in Clemens and a mentor for the Promoting Respect of Inclusive Diversity in Education (PRIDE) program, which provides a supportive residential experience for students of color during their first year at Trinity.  Botts finds it fruitful to bridge the two social groups in his sphere of influence, inviting his PRIDE mentees to Clemens activities, and the residence hall students to PRIDE events.

PRIDE can make an enormous difference in the lives of incoming students of color, he asserts. For many of them, he points out, “this is their first time in a predominantly white environment.” Botts says he became a PRIDE mentor because of his own first-year experiences. He vividly recalls some older students trying to impress upon him and his friends the hard realities of retention rates for students of color.  Many of you “won’t make it through four years here,” they said.  Botts took that conversation as a mandate to “do better for those that came after us.”

Nurturing Imani
Of all of his nonacademic activities, Botts is proudest of his participation in Imani. When he came to Trinity, the organization was called the Pan-African Alliance, and the group’s most active members were about to graduate. The organization nearly dissolved. Botts was among a handful of first-year students and sophomores who began rebuilding it the following year. When Botts was elected president, he says, his “mission” was to prove that cultural organizations could be vital contributors to campus life. During his tenure, Botts supported and participated in such activities as tutoring at the Boys & Girls Club at Trinity College and building houses through Habitat for Humanity. Botts believes Imani is now “one of the more beneficial and popular student organizations on campus.”

Botts also helped broker a peace between Imani and the Caribbean Students’ Association, according to Desmangles, who is the faculty adviser to the latter group. A few years ago, Desmangles says, Trinity’s Caribbean students and African American students weren’t sure there was enough room on the campus for both organizations. Botts persuaded both sides that neither was a threat to the other, and today both organizations are established cultural groups in the Trinity community.

Knowing how fragile the existence of student organizations can be, Botts hopes younger students will pick up the torch and keep Imani flourishing. “When I leave here,” he says, “I would like that to be my legacy.”

A wide-open future
Botts is still uncertain about his career plans for the long term—perhaps law school as a stepping stone to diplomatic service, perhaps seminary school to focus on theology—but he sees his immediate future very clearly. Soon after graduation Botts will marry Jacqueline Santiago ’00, who is in the first of a two-year master’s degree program in social work at the University of Connecticut. While Santiago is completing her degree, Botts likely will seek employment at United Technologies Corporation, where he did an internship last summer. Working for the director of Latin American supply management, Botts conducted demographic studies and other research to evaluate Mexico as a potential supplier of parts. He even accompanied his supervisors on a trip to assess certain machine shops in Mexico.

The internship presented Botts with an opportunity to apply in the workplace many aspects of his liberal arts education—not only his broad knowledge of Latin America, but also his computer literacy, competency in Spanish, and writing and critical thinking skills. It also suited Botts’s empathetic streak. The company’s work is done all over the world, Botts notes, and some of it could just as capably be done in nearby Mexico. Botts and his team of colleagues saw themselves as championing the cause of the underdog, he says. “We wanted to prove to the higher-ups that Latin America is very viable.”  

–Leslie Virostek