Columns

CONTRERAS | An Ode to Our Trailblazers

By |

Two nights ago, we lost a trailblazing feminist and a hero. In her black cloak, she towered — not in height but in power — and meticulously paved the way for women’s liberation. And just like other revolutionaries before her, Ruth Bader Ginsburg ’54 died without seeing the world she envisioned come to life. She spent her last moments in a country that is crumbling. In a place where innocent Black and brown individuals are shot in the streets — and they’re falling.

Columns

CONTRERAS | Dairy’s True Colors: Racism at Dairy Day

By |

If you haven’t noticed the bubbling racial tension on campus as of late, you should probably come out from under your rock. From the unjust removal of and discrimination against Julia Feliz to racially insensitive Halloween costumes across campus, there is reason for people of color at Cornell to be on edge. So, when some friends informed me that they heard a member of an on-campus organization, who requested not to be named, say, “I’m not racist, but I just don’t like Mexicans,” I felt compelled to respond. As a Mexican-American student at Cornell, I am appalled that one of my peers felt comfortable to not only announce their racist beliefs, but do so at a public University event. The racist comment occurred on Oct.

Opinion

CONTRERAS | Hecha en America

By |

“But where are you really from?”: An insult disguised as a question. It implies that the recipient is not truly American, regardless of how they identified the first time the question was posed. I’ve been asked this question dozens of times since I started my undergraduate career. In my sophomore year, a classmate asked me where I was from, to which I simply replied, “Chicago.” This answer proved to be, of course, unsatisfactory. She continued to probe, asking me “where I’m really from” to which I replied, once more, “Chicago.”

Yet, she was determined.

Opinion

CONTRERAS | How You Look as a Meat-Eater Protesting Climate Change

By |

You skipped class to attend the Global Climate Strike. You gave up plastic straws. You tweet passionately about the Amazon fires (#prayfortheAmazon) and condemn our government and greedy corporations for destroying our planet. You tell people to take shorter showers, to recycle and to ride their bikes. You’re an environmentalist …