Prior to the Table Talk on Feb. 13, I had very little knowledge about the sanctuary movement, specifically at Cornell and in Ithaca. What I learned, however, was both inspiring and upsetting. I found out that Ithaca was declared a sanctuary city a while back, which I never knew and feel like should be known. While this seems promising, the question moving forward is what exactly is a sanctuary city and how does the area implement what it says in writing.

Now, this leads me the movement on campus. While President Rawlings has said that the University will ‘support and defend’ undocumented students, I found out that within the fine print of the email sent out to all of campus, the ‘supporting and defending’ is not what one would expect when hearing those words, as there are a lot of contingencies upon the extent to which Cornell will protect undocumented students. This was incredibly sad to learn, but at the same time, only increases the urgency for students and residents of Ithaca to learn more about the movement, what’s actually occurring, and what their rights are.

We discussed that one of the most important factors to creating a successful movement is getting people to mobilize. This is particularly difficult in this context, as this situation involves finding individuals who can be trusted to know private information about students who are potentially in danger. Personally, I believe the best way to get more students involved and aware is by promoting related events and spreading awareness by word of mouth in the hopes of capturing and garnering recognition for this topic on campus so that if an incident were to occur where individuals would be needed to protest/stand against something or someone, there would be enough awareness  on campus that individuals would want to do participate.