Marisa Diamond’s deep connection to Brandeis came before she was born, through her mother Marci Diamond ’91, who was a varsity track and field athlete, a Justice Brandeis Scholar and Waltham Group Coordinator. Marci Diamond currently serves as an Advisory Board member of the Waltham Alliance to Create Housing (WATCH) Housing Advocacy Clinic and has previously served as its president. It comes as no surprise, then, that her daughter remains very connected to the campus.
Marisa Diamond herself attended Waltham High School, and in an interview with The Brandeis Hoot, said she “grew up being at Brandeis a lot,” attending vacation camps and education programs at the university. Now, at age twenty-three, Diamond remains in Waltham and is running in the upcoming Waltham School Committee Election against four other candidates: Margaret Donnelly, John Graceffa, Edmund Tarallo and Jane Gately.
As a Latina woman, Diamond is passionate about representation in schools. Throughout her school years, she never once had a teacher or administrator that looked like her, and this continued throughout her undergraduate education at the University of Michigan (UMich.), in which she had a lot of negative experiences with the administration. She believes that if she had a role model who looked like her, it would have allowed her to be successful; she hopes to push for more people of color in teaching positions. By running for the school committee, Diamond hopes to be able to create change in a way that she would have liked to see at UMich.
Additional improvements that Diamond advocates for are small class sizes and a Dual Language School, which allows students to learn both English and Spanish and become immersed in multiple cultures.
By doing so, she hopes to create an inclusive space that caters to students’ specific needs. She is interested in the benefits of civil service, as she began her career in civil service by helping out her mother lick envelopes. She believes that one’s civic duty is “really important in the development of a complete human being.”
Diamond hopes to allow more student’s voices to be heard. She wants to create a direct line of communication with students. While her campaign is focused on Waltham Public Schools, one of the problems she has identified is the overwhelming amount of work and responsibilities they are subject to, resulting in students being unable to advocate for themselves during student council meetings. Diamond hopes to include the voices of all students through changes she will make while on the Waltham School Committee.
Diamond currently works three jobs, yet, she finds time to go out to events in Waltham such as Waltham Day or the Waltham parade and asking for feedback about the school system. She has also hosted meetings in her backyard to talk about pressing issues in the community. While Diamond is unsure what impact she will have on Brandeis students or if she has the power to create changes in the lives of Brandeis students, she hopes that Brandeis students will be impacted by the changes in the surrounding public school system.
