September 1998
Driving to my first meeting at the Women's Association for Women's Alternatives (WAWA), a shelter for troubled families where John Dolan '01 and I taught conflict resolution to children this summer, I missed the turn at the country road where they're located. I pulled up at a nearby chemical plant. A middle-aged white man was getting out of his car when I asked him, "Can you please tell me where WAWA is? The shelter?" The stranger nodded and looked over my young, confused, frustrated face. I realized that he probably thought I was looking for the shelter because I was running away from an abusive partner. Accidentally being seen as a victim felt strange, like a rough new shirt I didn't mean to put on and wasn't sure how to take off.
After going under a rusty railroad bridge, I drove up WAWA's narrow, bumpy road and saw several African-American children playing in the front yard. I entered a world that didn't seem real after having spent a year on Swarthmore's manicured campus--but it was a place of strength and beauty, where an entire family lives in one room, the children are already survivors, and women put their lives back together. WAWA's world is real to me now, and I'm wondering what I've learned from being with these sweet, crazy children.
I'm thinking about all my confusion and uncertainty after the first day, when three preschool children were punching each other, and none of our planned activities lasted long enough. I was worried none of the kids would like me. Now I know them; I know how sweet and kind they are when they share with each other, how passionate and stubborn they are when fighting, and how affectionate they are when they reach up for a hug.
But I've learned from working at WAWA how different my life in the ivory tower is from the reality of a 5-year-old boy who has spent his entire life in shelters. Hearing from the children's program coordinator why certain kids automatically recoil when you lean over them (they have been beaten so often) has made me question the purpose of my Swarthmore education. In my four years here, I want to be given the tools not only to understand the world but to improve it. Swarthmore's commitment to community service is essential to that quality education; discussion of theories and trends cannot substitute for leaving the campus and getting our hands dirty.
I got another dose of "reality" earlier this summer. I was sitting in a courtroom, listening to prisoners being sentenced as part of an internship at a news radio station. Nearly all the people being sentenced were black men, which made me think of the children at the shelter, who are mostly African-American boys. I began imagining how these men--who were being sentenced for such crimes as assault, rape, and robbery--must have looked when they were very young: probably a great deal like the boys that John and I are teaching. I wondered what happened on the path that led them to this courtroom, to being sentenced to jail in white uniforms, their hands cuffed together.
Through all my thoughts ran a feeling of regret, a feeling that their lives didn't need to be this way. I believe we have the ability to change the course of events and twist fate into new forms. Our education is useful only if we do more than discuss and understand the world--and work to change it.
As Swarthmore students we're lucky that we don't worry about our next meal. But the people who pick the fruit we eat and sew the jeans we wear often do. Without plans to help others, how can the discussion of theories and the accumulation of knowledge justify that we benefit from the existing power structure while others suffer so this system can continue to exist? As the English philosopher Herbert Spencer said, "The great aim of education is not knowledge but action."
Liz Cho is a sophomore from Cochranville, Pa.
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