Profiles of 2004 Graduating Students

Christopher LaPage has used his experience to spur his advocacy

By Susan Lang

Early on, life seemed to hold little promise for Christopher LaPage. Born to an 18-year-old single high school dropout, who already had a 2-year-old child, LaPage was adopted by family friends who were disabled, unable to work and did not make it through high school themselves. He lived with his adoptive family in Rochester, N.Y., on a very low, fixed income that sometimes included welfare and food stamps.

Policy analysis and management major Christopher LaPage poses in the stacks of the Physical Sciences Library in Clark Hall, where he has a part-time job. Robert Barker/University Photography

Although he didn't know it at the time, LaPage, a senior in policy analysis and management (PAM) in the College of Human Ecology, got a lucky break in fifth grade when he volunteered to be a "graffiti buster" to help paint over wall scrawls in his neighborhood.

"The director of that project took me under his wing and got me involved in the Youth Participation Project (YPP) for Rochester-Monroe County. That blossomed into working on the City-County Youth Council," said LaPage. He has been attending and giving presentations and trainings to other youths and youth leaders in Rochester and around the country ever since. LaPage was so involved, for example, that in his junior year of high school he missed some 60 days of school to travel advocating the programs, yet he still graduated with 27 advanced placement credits and as valedictorian of his high school class.

"These programs gave me something to believe in that was genuine, and they also gave me connections with middle-class adults with higher educations," said LaPage, who was pointed to Cornell by a high school biology teacher, and benefited from the Cornell's need-blind admissions policy. When he was dropped by Medicaid in his freshman year, he became interested in the health field as he fought his way back on the rolls. He spent last summer working for New York Assemblyman David Gantt (D-133rd) on health-care issues, and he spent last spring, through Cornell's Capital Semester Program in Albany, with Assemblyman Richard Gottfried (D-Manhattan), chair of the Assembly Committee on Health. LaPage's report on universal health care in New York helped him reap the honor of "distinguished intern" that year. (Read related story.)

Despite his multitude of life disadvantages, and having to work up to 20 hours a week in Cornell's Physical Sciences Library to make ends meet, LaPage has made the Dean's List every semester but one, is a Merrill Presidential Scholar and a member of Quill & Dagger Senior and Kappa Omicron Nu honor societies. He plans to work with Assemblyman Gantt again this summer and will enter graduate school in Cornell's Sloan Program for Health Services Administration in the fall.

The first college graduate in his family, LaPage hopes in the future to serve as a health management consultant who can play a meaningful role in advocating health care for the uninsured -- a precarious position he understands well.