Sotomayor and reasons for affirmative action

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by David Safier
A recent post on Kos written by a guy who grew up in Princeton, NJ, but didn't go to Princeton U. sheds light on Sotomayor's stay there. Bottom line: she had what it took to succeed at Princeton, and she succeeded, enriching herself and the university in the process. But she didn't have the skills to get in, or even to succeed, when she entered.

Sotomayor didn't have the background she needed to compete at Princeton when she was a freshman:

She was too intimidated to ask questions for her first year there; her writing and vocabulary skills were weak, and she lacked knowledge in the classics.

The reason wasn't lack of native intelligence or drive. She didn't have the upbringing or the schooling to shape her into "Princeton material." If the world were a different place and she had attended a top public school or one of those private schools that are Ivy League training grounds, she might have gotten in easily.

So the question is, if some people because of pure dumb luck are born into affluent families and get the best schooling and all the tutoring they need, should they have a better chance of getting into the finest universities than people of equal or greater talent who, through pure dumb luck, were born into less advantaged situations? My bleeding heart liberal answer is, if I had the choice, I'd give the slot to the less advantaged person, regardless of SAT scores and AP classes taken, if I thought that person had the right stuff to succeed at the university. Our society is supposed to be about giving everyone a shot at the brass ring. Those who are furthest from the ring should be given some extra assistance so they can get in position to have a reasonable chance at grabbing it.

And no, in answer to what some people could be thinking as they read this, we haven't become a race neutral society yet, though we've come a long way from where we were a few decades ago. I'll leave it to others to decide whether it was Sotomayor's ethnic background, her economic situation or a combination of the two that lowered her chances of getting into Princeton in a blind admission process. But it's hard to believe that anyone watching her at the Senate hearings can doubt she has the qualities we associate with students who belong at our top universities. Yet she wouldn't have attended, and possibly wouldn't have been in a position to be considered for the Supreme Court, if she had been judged purely by her college application.

Here's a bit more about Sotomayor at Princeton. (It's from Wikipedia, just so you know the source.) It looks like Sotomayor took full advantage of her education — something you can't say about lots of people who consider a college education one small part of the entitlement due them as a birthright — and Princeton is a better, more inclusive place because of the years she spent there.

She put in long hours in the library and over summers, worked with a professor outside class, and gained skills, knowledge, and confidence.  She became a moderate student activist and co-chair of the Acción Puertorriqueña organization, which looked for more opportunities for Puerto Rican students and served as a social and political hub for them. She worked in the admissions office, travelling to high schools and lobbying on behalf of her best prospects. Sotomayor focused in particular on faculty hiring and curriculum; at the time, Princeton did not have a single full-time Latino professor nor any class on Latin America.

Sotomayor later addressed the curriculum issue in an opinion piece in the college paper: "Not one permanent course in this university now deals in any notable detail with the Puerto Rican or Chicano cultures." After a visit to university president William G. Bowen in her sophomore year did not produce results, the organization filed a formal letter of complaint in April 1974 with the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, saying the school discriminated in its hiring and admission practices. Sotomayor told the New York Times at the time that "Princeton is following a policy of benign neutrality and is not making substantive efforts to change," and she wrote opinion pieces for The Daily Princetonian with the same theme. The university began to hire Latino faculty, and Sotomayor established an ongoing dialogue with Bowen.  Sotomayor also successfully persuaded historian Peter Winn to create a seminar on Puerto Rican history and politics. Sotomayor joined the governance board of Princeton's Third World Center and served on the university's student-faculty Discipline Committee, which issued rulings on student infractions. She also ran an after-school program for local children and volunteered as an interpreter for Latino patients at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital.

A history major, Sotomayor received almost all A's in her final two years of college. Sotomayor wrote her senior thesis at Princeton on Luis Muñoz Marín, the first democratically elected governor of Puerto Rico, and on the territory's struggles for economic and political self-determination. The 178-page thesis, "La Historia Ciclica de Puerto Rico: The Impact of the Life of Luis Muñoz Marin on the Political and Economic History of Puerto Rico, 1930–1975", won honorable mention for the Latin American Studies Thesis Prize. As a senior, Sotomayor won the Pyne Prize, the top award for undergraduates, which reflected both strong grades and extracurricular activities. She was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. In 1976 she was awarded an A.B. from Princeton, graduating summa cum laude. Sotomayor has described her time at Princeton as a life-changing experience.

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