{"id":26175,"date":"2016-08-16T08:01:15","date_gmt":"2016-08-16T15:01:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/justice-sotomayor-gets-personal-with-ua-fairbanks-audience\/"},"modified":"2016-08-16T08:01:15","modified_gmt":"2016-08-16T15:01:15","slug":"justice-sotomayor-gets-personal-with-ua-fairbanks-audience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/justice-sotomayor-gets-personal-with-ua-fairbanks-audience\/","title":{"rendered":"Justice Sotomayor gets personal with UA Fairbanks audience"},"content":{"rendered":"

FAIRBANKS<\/strong> \u2014 U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor shared some of her personal experiences with an audience in Fairbanks, calling on them to help build \u201ca better world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sotomayor spoke Sunday night at the Davis Concert Hall as part of a summer speaker series hosted by the University of Alaska Fairbanks, The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reported.<\/p>\n

The justice answered pre-submitted questions on topics ranging from the inner workings of the high court to her own life experiences.<\/p>\n

Sotomayor, who made history as the first Hispanic to be appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, also touched on the importance of affirmative action in schools.<\/p>\n

She said she got help with her admission into Princeton University through a pilot affirmative action program at her high school in the Bronx in New York. At the time, she said she struggled to understand why she deserved entry over non-minority students but later came to see affirmative action as recognition of potential.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt the indictment that there\u2019s something seriously wrong about looking at students and their promise because that\u2019s what affirmative action is about,\u201d Sotomayor said. \u201cEvery person who has a child going to school should hope that that\u2019s what schools are doing because if you\u2019re measuring students and their worth and their potential simply by quantitative numbers \u2014 what their SAT scores are, what grade they received in school \u2014 you\u2019re going to do a disservice to so many individuals.<\/p>\n

Sotomayor also talked about the importance of public service during Sunday\u2019s event. She emphasized that people can make change at different levels, whether through volunteer work or serving on a school board.<\/p>\n

\u201cI challenge you to make a better world with me,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

In discussing her legacy, Sotomayor said she wants to be remembered for making a difference in people\u2019s lives, whether big or small.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know if I can survive centuries, but I know that I can expand the reach of my life by every life I touch,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The justice\u2019s words seemed to touch Fairbanks teacher Heather Damario.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe made the court seem so much more accessible with how personal she was with everybody,\u201d Damario said. \u201cShe\u2019s just so personable, and I thought that was very impressive for someone of her caliber.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FAIRBANKS \u2014 U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor shared some of her personal experiences with an audience in Fairbanks, calling on them to help build \u201ca better world.\u201d Sotomayor spoke Sunday night at the Davis Concert Hall as part of a summer speaker series hosted by the University of Alaska Fairbanks, The Fairbanks Daily News<\/a>-Miner […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":26176,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-26175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26175\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26175"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=26175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}