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BA
1985 AD graduated

Michelle majored in sociology and minored in African-American studies, graduating cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in 1985 after completing a 99-page senior thesis titled "Princeton Educated Blacks and the Black Community" under the supervision of Walter Wallace.

Michelle was inspired to follow her brother to Princeton University, which she entered in 1981. Robinson recalls that some of her teachers in high school tried to dissuade her from applying, and that she had been warned against "setting my sights too high".

She believed her brother's status as an alumnus – he graduated in 1983, before being hired as a basketball coach at Oregon State University and Brown University – may have helped her during the admission process, but she was resolved to demonstrate her own worth. She has said she was overwhelmed during her first year, attributing this to the fact that neither of her parents had graduated from college, and that she had never spent time on a college campus.

The mother of a white roommate reportedly tried to get her daughter reassigned because of Michelle's race. Robinson said being at Princeton was the first time she became more aware of her ethnicity and, despite the willingness of her classmates and teachers to reach out to her, she still felt "like a visitor on campus".

There were also issues of economic class. "I remember being shocked," she says, "by college students who drove BMWs. I didn't even know parents who drove BMWs."

While at Princeton, Robinson became involved with the Third World Center (now known as the Carl A. Fields Center), an academic and cultural group who supported minority students. She ran their daycare center, which also offered after school tutoring for older children. She challenged the teaching methodology for French because she felt it should be more conversational.

As part of her requirements for graduation, she wrote a sociology thesis, entitled Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community. She researched her thesis by sending a questionnaire to African-American graduates, asking that they specify when and how comfortable they were with their race prior to their enrollment at Princeton and how they felt about it when they were a student and since then. Of the 400 alumni to whom she sent the survey, fewer than 90 responded. Her findings did not support her hope that the black alumni would still identify with the African-American community, even though they had attended an elite university and had the advantages that accrue to its graduates.

Princeton, NJ

Lattitude: 40.3573° N
Longitude: 74.6671° W
Region: North America