SETTING: Our Beloved World

CHARACTERS: All the people in it

Prologue

Thursday, 3:30 pm. I walked out of my international relations class, trying to put aside the heaviness sparked by the discussion on the Rwanda genocide and other ethnic conflicts. The first floor of Carnegie Hall — that classy building resembling the White House to some degree, and home to the politics and economics departments at Pomona College — was quiet. I slipped into the pair of dark blue heels reserved for special occasions, and walked down the stairs, step by step, hearing the clear echoes of my heels interacting with the ground. It was a perfect autumn afternoon in Southern California: the sky was azure, the breeze mild, the temperature moderate. And I was to meet a United States Supreme Court Justice in roughly fifteen minutes.

The venue was right across from Carnegie. My parents, who were visiting from China, waved to me as I crossed the street. In front of me stood Alexander Hall, where I work every Friday (at the Office of Communications). Inside it, I would find the Justice’s marshals evenly distributed across the space, each looking very serious. Indeed, the Justice herself, during the public talk that evening, described them as “the very professional-looking men and women in suits who are here to protect me from me instead of from you”. 

“Are you the Justice’s student escort? This way.”

Yes. I arrived at the area next to the President’s Office, waiting for the door to open. Well, technically, the door was not closed in the first place, allowing me a peek at the people inside: College President David Oxtoby, Prof. Amanda Hollis-Brusky from the politics department (who would be interviewing the Justice onstage at the public event in the evening), Prof. Gilda Ochoa from the sociology and Chicano/a Latino/a studies departments (who would be leading a discussion with Justice Sotomayor in a 40-student master class in a few minutes), and Dean Miriam Feldblum. The five of them, as I later found out, were having a thirty-minute conversation on their respective backgrounds, the institution of Pomona College, the Justice’s travel schedule, and baseball. The door was not yet wide open enough for me to catch a glimpse of the Justice herself. And so prolonged my eagerness and anticipation.

First Impressions

3: 51 pm. She was walking out of the room with a personable smile, after much suspense. Sonia Sotomayor, Supreme Court Justice. Wow!

We shook hands and exchanged greetings — The camera captured this magical moment. Justice Sotomayor asked me about my year and major, shared her perspective on double majoring, and talked about her “eventful flight” the night before as well as her visit to the Sotomayor School in Los Angles in the morning, just prior to her visit on our campus. We walked side by side. 

I did not feel nervous at all as I gave that brief 2-minute tour of Alexander Hall and Smith Campus Center for her; rather, I felt extremely comfortable, and adored how the Justice was so curious about everything around us, constantly asking questions like “What’s that building?”, “Where are you taking me now?” and “And what do you use that room for?”. I revere the sense of curiosity that one could easily see as a recurring element throughout her autobiography My Beloved World, a candid reflection on her life prior to the Supreme Court of the United States. Although too much curiosity may kill the cat, sufficient curiosity, as Justice Sotomayor has demonstrated from her early childhood, could be a positive personality attribute to have.

Truly, even though my time to interact with her this closely was very limited, I could safely agree with the popular notion of how she is known as “the People’s Judge” of the SCOTUS (just to name two examples, it might be difficult to imagine a SCOTUS Justice shopping at Costco or making an appearance on ABC’s daytime talkshow The View in front of 2-3 million viewers, but these were precisely what Justice Sotomayor did). Since this brief stroll on a cozy autumn afternoon was destined to become an experience of a lifetime for me, it would be only natural that I recall (close to) every word of our conversation. Perhaps, one of my favourite lighthearted moments was when Justice Sotomayor joked that she would not wear my heels at school, and then started to imagine what it would feel like to go to school here in this close-knit liberal arts college in Southern California. Having watched some of her televised interviews, I have observed a general trend where she tends to comment on other ladies’ heels, which reminds me of her honest remark that a sense of fashion has been wanting in her own case (something that resonates well with my personal experience).

Also known for being highly efficient, Justice Sotomayor literally did not waste any second during our precious time together, opting to sign my copy of My Beloved World on the elevator using a special blue pen of hers. Before we knew it, we had arrived at our destination: Room 208 of the Smith Campus Center, which was already packed with students, faculty and staff members eagerly anticipating the Justice’s arrival.

Scene One: The Master Class

Unity clap: noun; Defined as “a slow crescendo of group clapping”, the unity clap once helped Latino and Filipino farm workers unite with each other despite their language barriers. That day, the unity clap both opened and concluded the one-hour master class with the Justice, bringing together our mini-community as a symbol of solidarity.

Students, observed Prof. Ochoa, who led the discussion and collected questions from students prior to the event, are most interested in advice from the Justice: given the tone of the book and her status, students wanted to hear about how Justice Sotomayor navigated different aspects of her life. About half of the participants submitted a couple of questions in advance, some of which helped shape the questions that Prof. Ochoa was crafting. In this way, Prof. Ochoa strived to steer the conversation with Justice Sotomayor in a direction which would correspond well to the questions that the participants were most keen on asking.

Prof. Ochoa described her first impressions of the Justice, whom she met at the President’s Office right before the master class, “She appears very down-to-earth, very disarming. She asked if the staff members at the President’s Office and the photographer would like to pose for a picture with her, which I think was great. She was very interested in Pomona College, our policies regarding undocumented students, and the Claremont Consortium”. 

Compared to the public event whose audience totaled around 2,200 people, the master class was much more close-knit, with many of the participants being student leaders of groups including QuestBridge (a program that has linked high-achieving, low-income students to Pomona and other top colleges in the nation), IDEAS (which stands for “Improving Dreams, Equality, Access and Success”), the Claremont Journal of Law and Public Policy (for which I serve as Senior Editor this year), and so forth. Despite the obvious constraints of the Justice’s status, most of us appreciated how she shared her stories, insights and advice with us candidly. A couple of students, in their pre-submitted questions, called the Justice a “trailblazer”. Upon hearing this phrase, Justice Sotomayor paused for a second, and said that she is not a trailblazer, and instead went on to emphasise the role played by everyone who helped and supported her on her path to achieving what she has achieved thus far. Many of us in the audience, and Prof. Ochoa herself, appreciated the Justice’s humility that was exemplified by in this response.

[To be continued!]