Last week, I went to the student activism event thinking that it would be structured more as a conventional leadership workshop. I’ve been to about 10 of these workshops and while they do preach important messages, they get to be very “cookie cutter” after a while. This event was different. We did not sit down and talk about networking or handshaking; we talked about an issue specifically relevant to Cornell campus (an issue I really never thought about before). We talked about undocumented students. We talked about the fact that the US government ultimately is looking for reasons to deport them out of the country; we talked about how they work so much harder for fundamental rights most of us seem to take for granted; and most importantly, we talked about what people are doing to combat the negative stereotypes surrounding undocumented students.

In fact, we were introduced to a a panel of students who formed a club to combat these negative stereotypes. They work to create a welcoming community for others facing the same situation. And honestly, I cannot see why they must be labeled differently from the rest of us. If nobody told me about the stereotype, I probably would not have known about it. These students are no different from the rest of us–They attend college. They value education. They work hard. They are people too. Is it even necessary to label them as “undocumented?” Does it matter whether or not they are officially labeled to inhabit a specific region of land in this entire world? We are all people. Isn’t it enough that their parents worked so hard to get into this country and they’ve worked so hard to get to the place they are right now? I guess I think this is a much bigger problem than it needs to be, and these students are paying for it. It’s just plain unfair. Our country preaches equality and justice, but I guess it’s important to consider the qualification: equality and justice for whom?