I remember vividly the day I received my first college acceptance letter. The notification came in an email that I read on a mall bench just out of the reach of Chicago’s December cold. It came from Princeton and it came with joyful tears and tight hugs between my mom and I. It also came with a budding hope for a life different, better than that of my ancestors who picked cotton and worked in factories and sat in segregated movie theaters and lived in redlined neighborhoods and narrowly escaped the War on Drugs and still scrapped to make something of themselves. I think that’s why my mom and I cried so hard, ignoring the confused stares of passersby, locked in a moment of relief –– an American promise finally fulfilled. 

When I come back home now, from semesters in New England and internships in New York and summers abroad, I am met with abundant love. My family, my old teachers, my hometown friends –– they cheer me on with proud hearts. The people I don’t know, too. The lady at the coffee shop who tells me to rep my neighborhood with pride when I get around those rich kids. The man at the credit union who lets a smile slip onto his face when I tell him where I go to school. The promoter at the neighborhood festival who hears my story, gestures to the event, and tells me “that’s what we do all of this for.” I can see, and feel, how much it means to everyone. Because how often does one of us get to go there? 

None of this was a given. I’ve said this before. I was born in the wrong neighborhood, in the wrong city, in the wrong skin, to a mother who had to figure things out on the fly. There was no grand plan for me. I caught a couple of good breaks, and it’s probably the case that affirmative action was one of them. And now I get to go to a fancy school with life-changing opportunities. I am lucky. 

I am lucky, too, to be a student at this school at a time when it has been more diverse than ever, when I have the opportunity to meet so many brilliant people from so many different places. I am lucky to have made friends who, by simply being themselves, have taught me so much about the world and myself, who have shown me that much exists beyond the spaces with which I am most familiar. Whatever misgivings I have about this university, I am so very grateful for being offered a place on this campus. 

How much poorer this place will be now. 

There will be many takes offered over the next few days, weeks and months. Points made about the equal protection clause, strict scrutiny and colorblind constitutionalism. Arguments against the anti-democratic court and poignant quotes pulled from the dissenting opinions. Protests will crop up in public spaces and slideshows will crop up on social media feeds. Debates will be had over how to respond, over what comes next. 

I would like to do something different. I would like to document what we have lost, beyond the overtly political and deeper than our simplistic opinions on fairness and merit. I would like to catalog the sorrow of this moment.

What was once extremely difficult for a person from my neighborhood to do has now become nearly impossible. We have said to the communities from which I and other students come that our faith in the promise of American prosperity means so little. It doesn’t matter whether we believe people that look like us have a shot at making it inside those ivy-covered walls and actually succeeding there. The hopes of our homes, which we carry on our backs from class to class, library to library, club to club, have no value. The hopes of the students who come after us have no value, either, because those students were never meant to be here anyway. And so fewer kids will get to hold it down for their neighborhoods and come back home to share the joy of being a student at an incredible university.

There is fellowship gone, too. The rich and playful conversations that filter through our cultural center rooms, the family found through our affinity group clubs, the art and stories shared at our multicultural events. The nods shared on Cross Campus and “the look” exchanged after an absurd classroom comment. The slang and accented voices filling vaulted ceilings and polished classrooms and state-of-the-art labs. 

These things will not be as beautiful as they are now. This campus will not be as beautiful as it is now. And honestly I don’t know anything else to say other than that it will be really, really sad.