 As an activist , Sotomayor focused on faculty hiring and curriculum , since Princeton did not have a single full @-@ time Latino professor nor any class on Latin American studies . A meeting with university president William G. Bowen in her sophomore year saw no results , leading to Sotomayor 's saying in a New York Times story at the time that " Princeton is following a policy of benign neutrality and is not making substantive efforts to change . " So , Acción Puertorriqueña filed a formal letter of complaint in April 1974 with the Department of Health , Education and Welfare , saying the school discriminated in its hiring and admission practices . Sotomayor wrote opinion pieces for the Daily Princetonian with the same theme . The university began to hire Latino faculty , and Sotomayor established an ongoing dialogue with Bowen . Sotomayor also successfully persuaded historian Peter Winn to create a seminar on Puerto Rican history and politics . Sotomayor joined the governance board of Princeton 's Third World Center and served on the university 's student – faculty Discipline Committee , which issued rulings on student infractions . She also ran an after @-@ school program for local children and volunteered as an interpreter for Latino patients at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital . 
