In a 2002 interview Judge Sonia Sotomayor said that she felt “isolated … and very unsure about how I would survive” as an undergraduate at Princeton, and that campus organizations for students of color “provided me with an anchor I needed to ground myself in that new and different world.”
Sotomayor grew up poor in the Bronx, and she discovered in her first semester at Princeton that her educational background “was not on par with that of many of my classmates.” She became involved in Accion Puertorriquena, a Puerto Rican student organization, and the campus’s Third World Center, and she credits “the third-world students who preceded me and those who had supported me while I was at Princeton” for helping her to thrive on campus.
The complete article, from Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education, is not online, but extended excerpts can be found here.
studentactivism.net 
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May 27, 2009 at 8:19 pm
Emily
Not too different, then, from Michelle Obama’s experience as a woman of color in ’70s/’80s Princeton, perhaps.
As a Princeton student today, I take an active interest in my university’s (often alienating, isolating, and downright prejudicial) history. Thanks for pointing out this tip.