Thomas J. Volpe Lecture Series
Sonia Sotomayor—Holding Court at SFC
Justice Sotomayor with Rochella Providence ’20.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor shaking hands and greeting audience
members as she walked through the crowd.
Vice President for Government and Community Relations Linda Werbel Dashefsky,
Chairman of the Board of Trustees John F. Tully ’67, and Chairman Emeritus Thomas J.
Volpe, presenting Justice Sotomayor with an Honorary Doctor of Laws.
Justice Sotomayor with Sparkle Sooknanan ’02.
F E B R U A R Y 2 — As
she walked down the aisles, shaking hands with dozens of the almost 700 people who came to
see her speak, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor talked about an important realization she’d come
to since joining the highest court in the country.
“I’ve learned that reasonable people can disagree and I’ve learned to
respect that my colleagues do what they do or come to the decisions
they come to, not from ill will or from a desire to hurt anyone, but from
their sense of passion about what they think is best for the law, for the
constitution, and for our system of government,” said Justice Sotomayor.
The Supreme Court Justice came to St. Francis College as the latest
speaker in the Thomas J. Volpe Lecture Series. She engaged in a
conversation with a former law clerk and St. Francis alumna, Sparkle
Sooknanan ’02, now an associate at Washington based law firm, Jones
Day; then answered questions from students.
Justice Sotomayor commented that Sparkle, a first-generation college
student from Trinidad, graduated from St. Francis and went all the way
up to clerking at the Supreme Court, where her peers were educated at
the most exclusive colleges in the country. She said that she came to
the College as a thank you to Sparkle and also because she admires the
students of St. Francis College, many of them also the first in their family
to go to College, because of “the things that you’re doing, which is
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working hard to make your lives better. That’s really the drive that makes
you succeed; that desire, the will, and the dedication to get ahead.”
When asked about gender inequality, she pointed to her own personal
story and a U.S. Marshal calling her ‘honey’ as well as statistics that
show that women still make far less money for equal work than men
and lag behind in the number of power positions held at companies,
organizations, and in government.
“It’s unthinking discrimination in large measure, unthinking because
most people in positions of power are not sensitive enough to recognize
that for themselves, when they’re evaluating people they’re going to
promote or put in positions of responsibility that are great, they tend
to look for people who look like them,” added the Justice.
After the talk, Justice Sotomayor was presented with an Honorary
Doctor of Laws by St. Francis College Interim President Timothy J.
Houlihan, Chairman of the Board of Trustees John F. Tully ’67,
Chairman Emeritus Thomas J. Volpe, and Vice President for
Government and Community Relations Linda Werbel Dashefsky. ●
ST. FRANCIS COLLEGE TERRIER | FALL 2017 | VOLUME 81, NUMBER 1