Julia Lang, one of our regular contributors, just completed three weeks of teaching at the Civic Leadership Institute. After interacting with a homeless person on the way home one night, Julia found herself wondering what more she could do. She offers a great set of reflections and challenges for everyone working at the intersections of university and community, education and transformation.

By Julia Lang

Three days before students left the Civic Leadership Institute*, where I had just spent three weeks teaching about inequality, power, privilege, leadership, social justice, social responsibility, and leading service projects throughout San Francisco, I found myself walking home alone back to the dorms at midnight.  The program was going well, students were having breakthroughs and grappling with really tough social issues and personal biases, and I felt proud for the transformation I was seeing in my classroom.

We had recently heard a homeless man read poetry about the great love of his life and speak of his loss and dehumanization from living years on the street. As I was walking my mind wandered to the moment when one of my students tearfully admitted “I have never looked them in the eye…I was taught to look away…I now see them as people…I will now see everyone as just people.” This was good. We were making progress. I was getting through to them. The world was cracking open.

Ahead of me, an older man was standing alone on the street selling “Street Sheet”, a newspaper created and sold by the homeless. I was familiar with the paper—in fact, a week prior, I had led my 15 students into the Tenderloin District to do a service project with the Coalition for the Homeless, who put out the paper. As I approached the man, he asked me to buy the paper, explaining how it would help him buy a warm room for the night. I apologetically replied that I had already bought two of the same exact issues. It was true, I had. I lingered a moment, wished him a good night and then moved on.

One block away, then three. With every step, a deep feeling of disgust and self-loathing grew in my gut. I had just spent three weeks tirelessly trying to inspire students to care for their fellow humans, and here I was walking back to my warm bed to rise early and teach the same theme the next morning. Would my life be different if I gave him one dollar? Five? Twenty?

If I did nothing or, even a small thing to help him, what did that mean for others, who knew nothing about the paper, had never been to the headquarters, had never spoken directly to a homeless stranger?

Now several blocks away, I spun on my heels and walked back to the corner where I had left him. As he saw me approaching, he eagerly took two steps forward, excited to pitch his paper to a stranger who might make him one dollar closer to a warm rest for the evening. He soon recognized me, hung his head and stepped back, knowing I had already refused. I continued approaching and after walking directly up to him, an outstretched $20 in my hand, he raised his head, saw the bill, opened his arms and pulled me inside his wide weary arms, the thick calluses of his hands folding around my shoulders. Near tears, he asked me to say a prayer with him; I whispered back that I was not religious, but did believe that we are all connected and responsible for helping each other. I squeezed back, wished him a warm bed for the night and to take good care of himself, and then I walked home. Within a block, I was gasping for breath through deep, guttural sobs.

I knew that my quick act of charity meant nothing in the long term. I was teaching my students to treat the root causes, not the symptoms of problems, but what more could I do? Especially right then? I could feel like I did something that one night for that man, but what about the night after that? And the next? What about the other thousands of people wrapped in blankets on the pavement that night? If I did one thing for one, could I justify not doing anything to use my privilege to ease the suffering of others?

As I continued walking home, shuffling in my shame, I began to ask myself the deeply personal, disturbing question that continues to plague and haunt me as I prepare to lead another extensive service-learning trip: What is enough?

What do we want our students to actually learn, gain and DO from these experiences and how are we as educators holding ourselves accountable? Do we practice what we preach? If so, how?

If you think you do, do you? Really?

If we truly commit to educating students about social justice, privilege, inequality and oppression, and working to create a more just world, are we condemning ourselves as practitioners to never live a comfortable middle-class life?

As I continue to work for service-learning organizations in the US and abroad, I am increasingly gaining more of an understanding of “good practice” in the field—be it how to facilitate effective reflection sessions, create reciprocal educational opportunities between students and community members, or intentionally construct opportunities for intercultural contact and exchange. Great. I can do that.

But as I dive further into this field, I am left with a gaping hole in my own mind about my own social responsibility— until I really understand what I am expecting of myself, I feel somewhat paralyzed in inspiring students to become “agents of change” and “active, global citizens.”

As an educator teaching others to recognize and work to fight injustice, I don’t yet know how I fit into this glaringly unjust world. I haven’t yet decided what my own personal sacrifice…commitment…responsibilities are. I teach others to gain an awareness of their privilege and use it to become a more active citizen devoted to social change but what is it that I actually want from my students and what is it I will demand from myself?

If a privileged young woman returns home from an intensive service-learning experience and now sees everyone as people, smiles at the homeless person, looks them straight in the eye, gives them a dollar and wishes them well— is that enough?

I don’t think so. That wont really change much at all.

If a young man returns home and begins volunteering at his local soup kitchen once a week, have we succeeded?

If we, the educators, devote hours of our time and receive little pay for facilitating service-learning experiences, only to go home, do a lot of yoga, take a vacation to the beach to decompress, and go out to dinner with our partner, are we too, falling back into our comfort, our privilege?

What is the alternative?

Do I give a percentage of my income to those in need? We teach our students to do more than charity, so if we listen to our own words, that is not enough.  Giving $20 to a homeless man is certainly not enough.

But as educators, we are helping dozens, hundreds, maybe even thousands of students view the world differently! That should surely be enough, right?! Yet that so easily allows us off the hook— we are helping others to recognize inequality and injustice and develop a sense of empowerment and responsibility to be active citizens, so through our work getting OTHERS to carry the torch, we can just continue to light it and still sleep well at night.

Am I then a coward? Are we hypocrites?

As I get ready to embark in September for Central America, where I will lead a group of college students on a for-credit service-learning semester in Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala and Costa Rica (who are each paying over $8,000 for the experience), I find myself agonizing over what my intended impact will be, both for my students and for myself. It almost seems too easy to use educating others as my contribution to the world because I am just passing off the responsibility to actually do anything for others.

What is “enough” for a student returning from this trip? Do we hold ourselves to the same standards that we idealistically set for our students?

In an unjust world where we hold the power and privilege, what is it that we are actually asking of our students and ourselves? How do we hold ourselves accountable to fight for the transformation that we wish to see and become models to our students as agents of positive change?

I don’t have the answer but I suppose asking the right questions is the first step.

* Note: The Civic Leadership Institute (CLI) at the University of California, Berkeley, is a three-week long civic leadership and activism camp through the Center for Talented Youth (CTY). CTY sponsors several summer camps to provide talented students with an opportunity to be among other intelligent peers and work beyond the traditional classroom. Its unique twist: let’s take the best and the brightest in the world (students hail from China, Puerto Rico, Germany, etc.) and for eight hours a day, teach them about hunger, poverty, environmental destruction, and power and privilege.

Every other day, students trade classroom learning for experience in the community, completing projects throughout San Francisco, be it helping to serve meals to the homeless at Glide in the Tenderloin district, beautifying a women’s shelter in Oakland, packing hundreds of oranges at the San Francisco Food Bank, or advocating to abolish the death penalty with the ACLU.  The program works incredibly hard to create a living/learning community where the academic and residential sides of the programs create a powerful, immersive experience for youth to grapple with really difficult realities in the world and in their own minds in a safe and supportive environment. Learn more here: http://www.ctd.northwestern.edu/cep/programs/cli/