When you first meet Kevynn Gomez, what you see are the Buddy Holly glasses, short hair and the Doc Marten boots she sports daily – all traits of a militant feminist who may be hard to talk to. Don’t be fooled by appearance. The real Kevynn Gomez couldn’t be more different from the one the public perceives.

By her own admission, Gomez who is a student at Fresno City College and also on the staff of “The Rampage,” the college newspaper, has constantly run into problems with others’ expectations of her versus what she really is.

She is a socially conscientious young woman who is passionate about life, social justice and her writing. She describes herself as a regular woman with goals that include writing for a fashion magazine one day.

EARLY YEARS

Gomez’s story begins in Southeast Fresno in 1993 where she still lives to this day. She has a twin, Carlee Gomez, who has always been a major part of her life. Her parents Cynthia Gomez and Ralph DeSantiago separated when she was young. When she talks about her childhood, it is about her mother and her mother’s family and how supportive they were.

Her parents’ separation impacted her greatly. Gomez recalls relying heavily on her mother after her father had left the family. Gomez remembers being protective of her mother when her father would speak ill of her.

“He was very negative towards our mother. It was terrible the way he spoke of her,” she said. “I was protective of her. I’m very much my mother’s daughter.”

She would later make the choice to sever ties to her father.

“The last time I spoke with him was over the phone when I turned 12 and basically told him ‘Don’t call us anymore,’” Gomez said.

Jodeci Velez, a childhood friend of Gomez, said, “Her family is very tight knit … they’re really small so they had the opportunity to be close.”

Gomez attended Ewing Elementary School. She was later accepted to Manchester G.A.T.E. along with her twin sister. Following her time in elementary school, Gomez attended Kings Canyon Middle School where problems with other students forced her and her sister to transfer to Fort Miller Middle School.

“There [were] fights everyday there between students,” Gomez said of her time at Kings Canyon. “There were girls there that didn’t like my sister and myself for stupid reasons.”

FINDING HER PASSION

Gomez also remembers going through a rebellious phase at this point in her young life.

“In middle school that’s when I started going through my bad phase, as a kid you’re angry at the world and you can lash out and not know why,” she said.

Gomez said that by the time she completed middle school and entered Sunnyside High School, also in Southeast Fresno, she was maturing and getting out of the pattern of “acting out.”

“I think my first semester was still the Kings Canyon environment of being a rowdy, troublesome kid. By my second semester, I had a 4.0 grade point average,” Gomez said. “That’s when I changed my path.”

While she was a student at Sunnyside, Gomez found the journalism program where she worked for all four years of high school. At times, she was the sole writer on the staff. In addition to journalism, Gomez dedicated more of her time and energy to her schoolwork which she saw as a “confidence boost.”

Barbara Riccardi, her journalism adviser at Sunnyside high remembers working with Gomez.

“She was an excellent student and an awesome journalist,” Riccardi said. “Absolutely one of the best.”

After graduating from Sunnyside, Gomez was accepted to Notre Dame De Namur, a Catholic university in Northern California. Gomez said the time she spent at the university taught her many lessons that she may not have learned in Southeast Fresno. She met people who were very different from the people she knew in Fresno. But by the fall semester of 2012, Gomez was ready to return to the “hood” as she calls her neighborhood and enrolled in Fresno City College.

UNWANTED ATTENTION

March, 22 2013 is a day that Gomez is not likely to forget soon. It was a day that started normally, but by that day’s end, she had been assaulted by Brian Calhoun, an education instructor at the college. She knows that this event will probably be a major part of how people at FCC see her.

The case was widely covered by the media, including several blog sites such as “Jezebel” and “Three Sonorans” which described the assault as a “Latina version of The Trayvon Martin case.”

Gomez has had five months since the incident to think things through. She said all she wanted was to finish her midterm exam and go on her spring break which started the next day. She had not sought out Mr. Calhoun. He had disrupted her class, causing enough chaos that they had been unable to finish their test. What ensued had taken her by surprise.

“It might sound strange,” Gomez said, “but the way he was talking to the fill-in instructor … was so degrading and belittling towards him. It sounds corny, but I think it was a maternal instinct.”

Gomez felt she had to say something. She had no way of knowing that Calhoun would react the way he did or that he would refuse to let go of her despite her pleas.

She said most people have been supportive.

“It’s kind of the reason I’m so ready to get out of here,” Gomez said of the attention she has received from the incident. “It’s not really an environment I want to be in anymore. People ask questions, but they don’t realize they are being insensitive.”

Gomez admits that she has had problems with men, especially older men, including being verbally abused by men in public transportation, getting followed by men in cars on the way home and even being physically attacked by a man.

“I think even though I’m 20 years old, people see me as a very young girl,” she said. “I think people see me as a very vulnerable fragile little girl because I’m only 5 feet 2 inches.”

But Gomez also said that sometimes when men try to get her attention, she may throw some salty language into her response to get them to leave her alone.

Gomez looks forward to leaving FCC and transferring to a four-year college in the upcoming semesters. She plans to continue to work on her writing, keeping her goal of writing for a fashion magazine in sight at all times.

“My goal is to go to a San Francisco State, get my journalism degree done there, get a good job and get started on working in professional journalism,” Gomez said. “I am kind of ready to get out of college. I feel like life is hard enough and I am just ready to get started.”