While many of you were enjoying the wonders of flip cup by the beach in Daytona, I started out my summer in a place were "suit" means something generally not seen by the surf: Washington, D.C. I clinched a coveted spot working as an intern for Ohio's own Senator Sherrod Brown.

 To be an intern in America's capitol, it requires a lot of, well, capital. Certainly one must make it through the selection and interview process, but on a more practical level, it requires a lot of financial capital. D.C. is an expensive city, and most interns are unpaid. To be able to afford an entire summer of unpaid labor is something unique to those who either saved up a substantial amount of cash, or more likely, have parents willing to foot the bill. Like most of my fellow interns, I was in the latter category.

 The resumes of Senator Brown's faithful helpers could be mistaken as simply a list of America's most esteemed (and most expensive) universities, not the most accurate sampling of Americans, especially when one thinks that these are the folks with a foot in the door to lead in the future.

 Here's where it comes back to Dayton. As students, we have the unique ability to shape the future. Isn't that our motto? Learn, Lead, and Serve? We can all lead. And we talk a lot about Marianist values and social justice. But just as there is grave injustice in the fact that the only people who can afford to intern on Capitol Hill are at least upper-middle class, there is injustice in the fact that most Dayton residents could not afford to attend UD!

 Think about your friends. How many of them come from roughly the same upper-middle class background? And think also, of just beyond Brown Street to the downtown area. How many of the residents living there do you think could afford UD tuition?

 You see where I'm going. And you may reject my point, saying there are students on scholarship at UD. We do have some diversity. Yet these are exceptions that prove the rule. And the rule is that UD students are privileged.

 I don't mean to imply that there isn't a great deal of personal accomplishment that goes into securing a Capitol Hill internship or a UD education. I only mean to point out that as a university committed to social justice, we need to start looking harder at some of the injustices in our own backyards. It's time to acknowledge the contradictions; only then can we fix them.