Members of The Save Africana Center Action Committee show that the resistence to last semester's changes to the Africana Center is alive and well.

Florencia Ulloa '11 expounds upon the virtues of affirmative action.

Despite Cornell’s efforts to increase black student enrollment, the proportion of black students in this year’s class dropped by about 20 percent from last year.

Sun columnist Judah Bellin '12 takes on affirmative action and the current push to make the system class-based.

The first year of every new decade marks the beginning of census season. It is a federal tradition that began in 1790 under a mandate from the United States Constitution wherein every 10 years the population of all those residing in the United States of America are tallied up in order to allocate congressional seats, electoral votes and federal funding. With 300 million-plus people belonging to the American community today, the United States Census Bureau has launched a heavy marketing scheme to assure a high participation rate among households across America. The ad blitz so far has been very effective; with the nationwide census participation rate already at 54 percent, the Census Bureau is well on their way to achieving their goal of surpassing the the 2000 census’ participation rate, which was 67 percent.

There’s something to be said about being on spring break and having the supremely dorky audacity to engage in meaningful conversation. Perhaps it’s the curse of the college student to always remain a college student, even well away from campus, on break.

As a 2008 Teach for America Corps member, I am serving my second year as a seventh-grade math teacher. Often I find myself wondering what percentage of my students will ever be afforded the opportunity to visit, much less attend, an institution such as Cornell.

To the Editor:

Re: “Sucker Punched: Exploring Race and Privilege,” Opinion, Nov. 19

Race expose in my college newspaper? I was skeptical, but intrigued. The author begins her column with a promise to explore the complexities of “white privilege,” but succeeds only in showing and exercising that privilege in a thin and racially-informed (I won’t say racist, because I fear fairer readers will bristle) piece detailing all the ways in which black people can and do behave badly.

White privilege. Despite my pale, freckled, Irish and Swedish skin (trust me, it doesn’t get much paler than this), it’s not something I really think about on a regular basis.

At least until I go home to Massachusetts. My aunt, whose skin is just as pale and freckled as mine, is a professor at Tufts, teaching classes such as “African American History since 1865” and “Class, Race and Gender in the History of U.S. Education.” She dedicated her education and career to learning about the events that have created white privilege (she acknowledges, ironically, that she occupies a position of privilege as a professor at a majority-white university).

So every time I come home, I am reminded — reprimanded, almost — of the white privilege that my life has been steeped in. My family not only acknowledges our white privilege, but constantly points it out to each other so that we do not take our opportunities for granted.

When I made my debut in the Opinion section, I advocated a different type of diversity: diversity of thoughts and ideas. Since then, I have avoided that topic, as I consider it too much of a cliché, but a few years later, the time is now ripe to revive this concept with a new twist.

No matter who they side with, those who fail to consider the diverse array of perspectives in composing their arguments are destined to produce poor sketches of their own arguments.