Sonia Sotomayor: The College Years

The public vetting of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor has turned, as was inevitable, to her experiences as a college student at Princeton and a law student at Yale.

And so, at The Cram, where college students cover news and politics, attention must be paid.

Politico's Ben Smith wrote an article Friday with the headline, "Princeton University holds the key to understanding Sonia Sotomayor." Just as when Americans were getting to know Princeton grad Michelle Obama, the Ivy League university is once again a crucial window, particularly on Sotomayor's sense of racial identity, Smith writes.

"Friends, classmates, and Judge Sotomayor herself say that sense of racial identity as a central political category -- and of her own place on the stage as not just a wise judge, but a wise Latina -- were formed in the unlikely crucible of Princeton," the Politico report says.

At Princeton, she was a leader in the campus Puerto Rican activist group and helped file a 1974 complaint with the federal Department of Health, Education, and Welfare alleging that Princeton lacked commitment to federally mandated recruitment goals, Politico reported.

The Washington Post published a story Monday looking back at Sotomayor's years at Princeton and Yale. Like Politico, The Post recounted Sotomayor's activism regarding hiring and admission of Hispanics at Princeton. Sotomayor also contributed one of three dozen signatures to a letter to the student newspaper protesting the ransacking of the dorm room of two gay students, The Post reported, and filed a complaint when she thought questions asked by a lawyer at a recruiting dinner were discriminatory.

Fox News had a story Thursday that looked at Sotomayor's record at Princeton, in which the channel referenced letters and articles from The Daily Princetonian that mentioned or were written or signed by Sotomayor.

The staff of The Daily Princetonian has posted seven articles and letters regarding Sotomayor on the paper's Web site. It's a good reminder to college students that your appearances in the campus newspaper could resurface decades later (many are learning this the hard way, as The Chronicle recently reported). It's also a good reminder, as even college newspapers feel strain from the poor economy, of the important historical record these papers can provide.