Last week, I attended a dinner conversation that featured Dr. Ariela Keysar, a professor of Public Policy and Law at Trinity College who lead a discussion about prejudice. Topics like prejudice are usually difficult to discuss, but I was pleased by how everyone who attended listened to each others’ stories respectfully. The majority of the discussion involved most of students each sharing instances in which we felt discriminated against. The major point that I noticed from almost everyone’s stories was that at Cornell, we all felt very aware of our race and our genders. Most of us remarked how we all came from neighborhoods that had predominantly “minority” communities, and we never thought much about our race until we came to Cornell. Suddenly when we walk into a room, we’re aware of the demographics, and then we worry if we’re out of place because of how we look. Coming from a high school with a 75% Asian population, suddenly I’m very aware of situations in which there are very few or many Asians at Cornell.

For example, one girl spoke about for a hospital placement, the program director placed her in a “worse” hospital in an inner city predominantly Spanish-speaking neighborhood simply because she is Hispanic herself. Although the director might not be aware, and placed her there out of convenience, she felt like she was wrongfully placed due to assumptions from her ethnicity. Similarly, we discussed briefly on how people talk to us in a condescending tone, like backhanded compliments: “you’re smart… for a girl” or “you’re attractive… for a brown person”. We had a brief moment to discuss potential solutions, and GRF Antonio suggested mandatory history or communication classes for first year students to become acquainted with being more respectful to people from different backgrounds. Ultimately, I thought the discussion was much too short to adequately cover such a complex issue such as “prejudice” but I enjoyed the opportunities to hear from Prof Keysar and stories from fellow peers.