Soto pushed back against the notion that a university education is merely a private economic investment. In the midst of devastating budget cuts to Arizona's public universities and new legislation seeking to eliminate Ethnic Studies classes from public schools, she argued that the graduates' education carried a profound public responsibility. Their reasoning, analyzing, and critiquing abilities needed to be applied everywhere — from the grocery store to the voting booth, from reality TV to controversial state bills. The class of 2010, she insisted, stood at a genuine crossroads: they would need every critical thinking tool at their disposal to negotiate and help solve problems that previous generations had failed to disentangle.