Sofia Funk: Working to Radically Alter Foundational Aspects of Society
Last summer, Sofia Funk worked remotely from Providence, Rhode Island, on debate curriculum development for SVUDL Teacher Coaches, researching and compiling topic and
teaching resources, and compiling the SVUDL tournament calendar. In fact, her summer 2023 internship with SVUDL was a big part of why she decided to work for SVUDL as a Program Specialist upon her graduation.
She appreciated knowing her work would support novices and Teacher Coaches as they were introduced to debate. She was excited about the work SVUDL was doing and trusted that she would get the same kind of support as a staff member as she did as a remote intern, and as a student while in high school.
That unique style of SVUDL support is part of how SVUDL prepared her for the intense academics of Brown University, but nothing could quite prepare her for starting college during a global pandemic.
“My freshman year was defined by COVID-19 restrictions which limited students’ ability to attend classes or extracurriculars in-person, or even to gather socially. By the time the most severe restrictions were lifted in the fall of my sophomore year, I had gotten a strange first taste of college, and I was still on uneven footing, personally and academically,” Sofia recalled.
“I am very glad that I went far away from home for college. I did not and could not have grasped four years ago how important that was for me to do. My experience —the seasons, the atmosphere, the people—was very positive, and I have a lot of fond memories of those places,” she reflected.
At the beginning of college, she was quite unsure of herself—not just her abilities, but her interests; unsure of the sort of person she was or wanted to be. “I slowly realized that while some of my ideas about myself entering college were not correct, one thing I could be sure about was that as anxious as I was about debate in high school, I was a debater through and through,” she remembered.
SVUDL prepared her with the foundational critical analysis skills to participate in discussion both inside and outside of the classroom, to test out her ideas and defend—or re-evaluate—them with others. “It’s scary to imagine a world without my SVUDL experience, and how much longer it would’ve taken me to take some risks—such as by registering for a rigorous upper-level history seminar: a seminar that ended up being my favorite at Brown, despite my utter lack of course background before then, and the 12+ hours of assigned reading every week,” she emphasized. She also uncovered a deep interest in philosophy, overcoming her uncertainty and self-doubt as a woman of color within the discipline to hone her skills in several analytic philosophy courses, including a graduate seminar on skepticism about the a priori and a posteriori during her senior year.
As a first-generation anthropology student at Brown with a passion for positive social change and educational equity, what was most appealing to her was its capacity for social critique. “As time passed, I realized that I was not too interested in a life of academia, or really of field work. By my junior year, I returned to law as a potential pathway—one I had previously discarded, thinking I was both not smart enough and too good for law school—and by my senior year, I was convinced that the law was a real pathway to the kind of positive social change I wanted to see in the world,” she revealed.
Sofia is committed to expanding access to educational, professional, and creative opportunities for marginalized students and working with others for sustainable social change. “I had the enormous privilege to not only get a college education, but an Ivy League degree. Now, the enormity of that privilege is not because an Ivy League education is categorically more challenging or more rigorous than at other schools—I don’t think that’s true. But firstly, lots of powerful people think it is, which holds a lot of weight in certain spaces; and secondly, the structure of a Brown education—especially the Open Curriculum—really did foster deeply favorable conditions for learning and growth,” she noted.
“That second part is a privilege, a deeply felt one that has shaped how I view myself and the world, but I don’t think that opportunity should be limited to the few students who go to the Ivy League out of a local school or district. I think all students should be able to get time and resources to learn, make mistakes, and figure out what they want to do and be. Most marginalized kids don’t get that kind of breathing room. In fact, a lot of students don’t get any kind of grace or space to explore. It’s a lot harder for them to access even opportunities which are ostensibly available. It’s important to keep that in mind—a lot of students don’t even get their foot in the door on many professional and academic opportunities,” she continued.
And for those marginalized students who can access the limited opportunities available to them, “there’s a lot of pressure (real and imagined) to do something that makes money, that looks impressive, to get some kind of cushion—to gain some privilege. There’s this much-maligned idea that these students should ‘rise above’ their circumstances. Setting aside the implications of that rhetoric momentarily, there’s a kernel of truth to this idea: it IS a privilege to be invested in to that degree, and privilege is a very good thing to have—in the basic sense that your life is nebulously, but securely, better for it,” she stated.
“There’s also pressure on these types of students to give back, to not leave their communities behind—communities that are already being left behind by the government or the law. I certainly feel that everyone should do something in their life that “gives back” to the world in some way—I think that’s a shared responsibility. But there’s also a lot of undue and unfair pressure on some individuals to dedicate themselves to others at the expense of their own growth. It’s not a zero sum game—you can have both. But there needs to be a different model. Lots of people in our society do get the opportunity to explore, and take advantage of that opportunity to varying degrees, with varying social consequences and rewards. I am interested in making a diversity and abundance of professional, academic, and creative opportunities the norm for marginalized students,” she passionately described.
Sofia also shared her thoughts on participating in discourse, and the role of debate in everyone’s life: “When people say they don’t know how to argue or they don’t like arguing, in my experience it’s often because they feel like they don’t know how to express their deeply held beliefs in a way that will make them as important in the conversation as they feel to them personally. They don’t know how to respond to the terms of a discussion that they feel isn’t weighing their concerns heavily enough—a discussion which is unable to account for the magnitude of their own feelings and beliefs. Sometimes, people feel like they can’t even begin to voice what they think because they’ve been taught to evaluate claims and evidence by standards that disvalues what they value. Of course, this doesn’t mean you should be blindly confident that you are right, even if all signs point to you being wrong. Being able to discuss your beliefs and defend them in a shared discourse is important. But sometimes the terms of that discourse are unacceptable, and being able to recognize that has helped me better tell the difference between an unpopular argument and a bad one, and to subsequently have confidence in the former,” she said.
She is excited about a career in law, but she is also interested in poetry writing. She doesn’t want to let either dream go because they meet different needs for her. Interested in constitutional law, she thinks the current and upcoming era of constitutional interpretation could definitely use more progressives. Immigration reform is another major interest for Sofia. She values how much power, and also freedom, a law degree can confer to an individual, but also the tools the legal system has at its disposal to radically alter foundational aspects of society.
Sofia believes that debate is the most powerful activity in which she has had the good fortune to participate, and that it is debate that has given her the tools to speak her mind and to push the envelope in important conversations around the issues that matter to her most — namely the economic and educational inequities right in her own backyard. Specifically, it has contributed to her sense of self-possession and assertiveness when standing up for her beliefs and the needs of her community.
