“When privilege is normal in your life, equity feels like oppression — that’s the epitome of what we're talking about here,” Nolan Cabrera said.

Sitting on Derek Adams’ desk in the Muller Faculty Center is a copy of Percival Everett’s novel “I Am Not Sidney Poitier,” a story about a character who is consistently mistaken for Academy Award–winning actor Sidney Poitier. The character decides to travel the U.S. and discover who he is so people will stop labelling him as someone he is not.

A former Division I prospect has found a new home in Ithaca.