I have spent most of my undergraduate career at Cornell thinking. The rest of the time was spent complaining. What better way to combine all these things together than right here?
As a student here, I have been very preoccupied with uncovering the root of things. My time in the Comparative Literature department has shown me that the best way to move through big ideas is to first be critical of them, and then read what other critical people have also said about them. I want meaning and have spent almost all of my time trying to make it. Whether academically, professionally or socially, there have been moments when moving forward felt impossible. Speaking to those around me, I’ve realized that feeling is widespread.
I learned how to read in Portuguese, taught by my pedagogy professor Grandmother who doesn't really take no for an answer. This was perhaps my first encounter with the idea that something can have real meaning, letters could come together and let me describe something entirely new and different from the letter itself. I could keep doing this over and over again. Moving to English created a whole new set of ways that I could bring the letters together. So I kept going with it, back and forth between Brazil and New York trying to string letters into words and words into meaning! This locational displacement has given me a lot of time for reflection that one would hope might turn into tangible action.
Making meaning proves to be very difficult, which is why I am turning to the page in order to process what it might look like for myself, and to understand what it already is for others around me on campus. The lack of hubbub at Cornell feels decisively meaningless, and I'd like for that to change. This past weekend as I stood around, admittedly a bit confused, at the No Kings protest downtown, I wondered about where all the Cornell students were. I also wondered about how it is decided when the peak time of a protest is and what it might look like if all the people of my age group actually decided to talk to each other.
While we live on a hill, we do not need to lock ourselves up in our towers. I believe that meaning can only be created together, and through discussion that is imperative to the betterment of our community — whether we are in agreement or not. Cornell feels largely silent a lot of the time, and my goal is to change that before I leave. Big questions feel unspeakable, but in reality they are made up of words just the same as everything else. I'd like to use those words to bring us down off our high hills and onto the ground, so we can hit it running and more importantly, talking. This will be a space for critical reflection and for big questions that will more likely than not go unanswered — but never unspoken.
This is a page where I am the one in control of the words, of making some meaning, but it should also be a space that is open for discussion and interpretation. There is no meaning without sense, and there can be no sense without a multiplicity of opinions. More importantly, there cannot be any agreement without accountability, which is part of my meaning mission at this University.
Cornell has been able to create a national stir on more than one occasion. We as students have the biggest opportunity to push boundaries and figure out what this place is all about. Let’s talk about it and make sure we have held ourselves up to a standard that is worthy of our proven ability to act.
There is much that I disagree with at this institution, and while some stems from outside powers, students are often complacent in what could have bigger solutions, but doesn’t. This is where I am calling all of you out, but also myself as a cog in the academic machine that spits us out lost after graduation. Hopefully, Making Meaning can let us be spit out a little more gently, perhaps just lightly chewed on instead of gnawed out. Maybe if we're really working hard we won't get swallowed at all.
I don't have a lot of answers, just a lot of complaints. I look forward to working through them together in the search of what meaning might be, and how we could potentially make it.
Nina Davis '26 is an opinion columnist in the College of Arts & Sciences. She served in the 142nd Editorial Board as photography editor. Her column Making Meaning is interested in asking questions that do not have easy answers. She can be reached at ndavis@cornellsun.com.
