Please send comments or suggestions to:
Richard R. Crocker
Tucker Foundation
6154 S. Fairbanks Hall
Hanover, NH 03755
Phone: (603) 646-3350
Fax: (603) 646-2645
Richard.R.Crocker@dartmouth.edu
Rebecca Gleaning Corn
This year Students Fighting Hunger has expanded and launched two new creative and important initiatives to its student led effort to combat hunger. These two new efforts combine with this group’s ongoing Friday Community Dinner to provide an array of services to the Upper Valley.
Harvest for the Hungry, a community gleaning project was founded by Rebecca Heller ’05 during her sophomore summer. The idea behind this gleaning program came out of research done for a course, Environmental Studies 39, “Natural Resources, Development and the Environment”. Working with local farmers, Harvest for the Hungry recruits and trains student and community volunteers to harvest left over fruits and vegetables from local fields. By tapping local agency contacts and campus resources, and garnering the assistance of a local chef and nutritionist to plan and prepare the gleaned produce, Students Fighting Hunger managed to produce over 1500 nutritious frozen meals. The meals were distributed to low-income residents through two local food shelves.
Student Poverty Reduction Outreach (SPROUT) is the second new initiative in Students Fighting Hunger. SPROUT is a national program through the Children’s Defense Fund that works to fight hunger and poverty through educating and enrolling eligible community members in public benefit programs. The founder of this project, Rebecca Wehrly ’06, has worked with the Children’s Defense Fund to organize training for student volunteers. Soon SPROUT will be sending teams of students to local community dinners to provide assistance with applications for various public programs.
In addition to these two activities, SFH continues to run its Friday Community Dinner. This dinner, organized by Wilson Li ’05 & Samantha Wu ’07, in conjunction with the LISTEN Center in Lebanon, provides a free meal to anyone. The dinners are held weekly at Edgerton House, Episcopal Student Union. Together, this trio of programs makes Students Fighting Hunger an important part of community service at the Tucker Foundation.
Dean Stuart Lord
On countless campuses nationwide, too many advocates of community service are spending too much of their time lobbying for the recognition of service as an integral part of the higher education experience. Service is a hands-on learning experience and should not be reduced to standard academic discourse – service requires action. If we want to move beyond academic abstraction and into the realm of experiential understanding, no other activity offers as great an opportunity to do so as activities where we serve our fellow human beings.
Considering the fact that the value of character development and community involvement has stood the test of time in higher education, it is illogical that service is viewed as an extracurricular undertaking rather than as an integral part of education. However, it is also ineffective to pursue this debate because valuable resources, time and talents are being diverted away from the many programmatic tasks at hand.
If we are to make progress on the manifold social problems of the day, we must turn this debate on its head. We should no longer be questioning the value or necessity of service in the college curriculum, but rather looking for ways to more effectively and humanely serve!
Today, students participating in community service—as well as the staff that supports these efforts—understand the truism that service is an essential component of the higher education experience. It often occurs to those people who have made service such an integral part of their lives, that the real question is “Why doesn’t everyone else understand the value of service?”
Rather than lament why others don’t understand, we should continue in
our efforts to integrate service into the higher education experience by example.
We must integrate our character development and community involvement into the
learning process.
When we serve others, we not only change the quality of their lives – and
the conditions of their communities – but we, ourselves, are also changed.
Through service we obtain a new contextual frame of reference and a fundamentally
distinct mode of interpersonal exchange that transcends contemporary cultural
boundaries. We experience the depths of human goodness that countless people
before us have experienced. These changes to our intellectual makeup and our
emotional identity consciously and unconsciously affect our epistemological findings
and our methodological approaches in the classroom.
For example, I am convinced that you cannot spend four terms of your collegiate career coordinating a prison visitation program, and not have some practical findings or personal insights to contribute to a theoretical debate on the integrity of our nation’s penal system or the purpose of capital punishment.
In short, the service experience profoundly impacts who we are and how we think. Therefore, service cannot help but influence the questions we ask and the issues we find important. Since we know that the service experience impacts our classroom experience, then it seems only fitting that we help others around us to recognize this connection, rather than repress it.
If service is to receive its due recognition as an integral part of the higher education experience, then we – as students, as scholars, as agents of change – must find profound and practical ways to integrate our character development and community involvement into the learning process. By using our example to demonstrate the immense benefits of integrating service with the learning process, those who don’t yet see it will come to believe that service is essential to the higher education experience.
Take your service to the streets, but bring back your passions to the learning process.
Tucker Volunteer with a student
Millions of children have grown up with Dr. Seuss in their lives. From "The Cat in the Hat" to "Horton Hears a Who," Theodore Geisel has made an impact on the lives of people worldwide. In celebration of the Seussentennial, Dartmouth Community Services dedicated winter term to encourage literacy among our education and mentoring programs through reading Dr. Seuss books. First Book, (a national organization with new roots at Dartmouth) provided a generous donation of 300 books to be distributed to children throughout the Upper Valley. Throughout the term, students brought these books to read to children they tutor and mentor in our community. At the end of the term, the books were given to local children and schools to encourage future reading.
Dartmouth Community Services also celebrated the Seussentennial in a centralized way with a birthday party on February 21st. Book Buddies led the way in planning the party to benefit all student-led education and mentoring projects. Area kids visited Dartmouth and enjoyed a performance of a Seuss book by The Reading Company, storytelling, face painting, pin the hat on the cat, and a "one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish" fishing game. The children, students, and parents had a wonderful time playing games, listening to Dr. Seuss, and celebrating literacy.
There are currently 24 recognized religious organizations at Dartmouth College. Each of these groups has at least one campus minister or religious advisor who serves on the United Campus Ministry, which meets monthly for conversation and to design programs of common interest. In addition to hosting a picnic for new students each fall, the United Campus Ministry supports multi-faith services such as the Martin Luther King, Jr. multi-faith celebration and the annual Baccalaureate service. It also recently held the first religion fair at Dartmouth, where representatives of each group were available to provide information to the community. Each organization also sends a student representative to the Multi-faith Council, which is convened by the College Chaplain to promote multi-faith dialogue among students and student groups.
An alphabetical listing of the recognized groups is given below. You can obtain more detailed information about each organization on the Tucker/Religious and Spiritual Life website.
Agape Christian Fellowship (formerly Asian Christian Fellowship)
Al-Nur, Muslim Student Association
Alpha-Omega, United Church of Christ and Presbyterian Student Fellowship
Aquinas House – Catholic Student Center
Baha’i Club of Dartmouth
Baptist Student Fellowship
Campus Crusade for Christ
Chabad at Dartmouth
Christian Science Organization
Dartmouth College – Rollins Chapel ecumenical Christian congregation
Dartmouth Hillel Jewish Student Fellowship
Eastern Orthodox Christian Fellowship
Edgerton House Episcopal Student Fellowship
Fellowship of Christian Athletes
Latter-day Saints Student Association
Logos Community – Korean Presbyterian Student Ministry
Lutheran Student Center
Navigators Christian Fellowship
New Life Campus Ministries (Grace Outreach Church)
Provision Christian Fellowship
Quakers – Religious Society of Friends
Shanti Hindu Student Fellowship
Unitarian Universalst Fellowship
Zen Practice Group
Claudia Palmer
Known for her warm smile and desire to get to know students, Claudia Palmer has served Dartmouth as the Administrative Assistant to the Rabbi at Hillel for the past 4 years. Less well known is Palmer’s commitment to service after normal workday hours.
Palmer feels driven to help others because her family knew the desperateness of needing help and the joy in receiving it after years of supporting her daughter in her fight against leukemia. In 1993, when she found out that another high school senior in their community in Chelmsford, MA, suffered from leukemia and needed a bone marrow transplant, the news hit home in a very real way. Thinking she would sign up for just one volunteer shift for the school-initiated bone marrow drive, Palmer found herself in charge of the whole day! Under the guidance of Boston’s HLA, they managed to raise over $60,000 to more than cover the costly blood test kits ranging from $50-100 per person. With over 150 volunteers helping at the high school that day and numerous others who donated food, money, or their time, they added 1252 names to the bone marrow bank list in just one afternoon. Through spaghetti dinners, bake sales, puppet shows, Girl Scouts arts and crafts workshops, quilt sales, the Chelmsford community embraced this cause and provided an overwhelming surge of support. While she feels that few projects have so personally touched her, Palmer admits that she would not hesitate a moment to do it all over again.
She currently serves on the board of David’s House, a home away from
home for families that need a place to stay while a loved one is receiving treatment
at DHMC. She has co-chaired the Nearly New Clothing Consignment Sale 5 or 6 times
and regularly is involved with the Norwich Women’s Club. The clothing sale
raises money for college scholarship funds for Norwich school children. She cooks
dinner almost every Friday for the Edgerton House, which serves hot meals to
whomever needs one, through an Episcopal group on campus as well as Community
dinners once every three months for her Lutheran church community. She looks
forward to spending a week in Maine at Camp Sunshine, a camp for families with
sick children, with her daughter Emily as volunteers this summer after having
been campers for three years. The spirit of service infuses how she decides to
live her life and inspires others to take notice.
On April 30th, twelve Charlestown High School 9th graders and two faculty chaperons traveled to Hanover to launch an early college awareness partnership with Dartmouth Community Service's North Country Weekend (NCW). Charlestown High School is part of the Boston Public School system and has been partnered with Dartmouth through assistance from the Foundation for Excellent Schools.
The Dartmouth NCW mentors and Charlestown teens explored the different opportunities available for post-secondary education while discovering the unique nature of attending college in rural New Hampshire. Together they engaged in outdoor activities such as exploring the ropes course at Storrs Pond Recreation Area, dancing with Dartmouth group SHEBA, and discussing college goals and future plans with college administrators such as Dean Stuart Lord.
For years, NCW has invitd participants from around New England. The idea for this partnership came out of a desire by the student chairs, Elise Robinson '05 and Diana Lee '05 to improve the program through working with teachers and potentially developing a longer term relationship with the participants. The spring's NCW served as a trial run for the partnership. According to Robinson, "The weekend went extraordinarily well and we very much look forward to seeing the group again in the fall."
The Tucker Foundation set a very ambitious goal of raising $150,000 to further the vision of John Sloan Dickey, who created the Foundation more than fifty years ago. Although many of our friends have contributed to help us reach that goal, we remain at approximately 30% of our target with $45,000 in contributions as a response to our annual friends appeal. Each year we have more students than ever participating in our programs, engaging in service and leading community activities. The financial problems facing the College have affected all areas of the institution, including the Foundation, and we are continually faced with the possibility of reducing services and programs to our students and community. Your support can ensure that we are able to continue our mission of creating conscience as well as competence. Through your continuing donations to these programs you can engender a sense of civic responsibility in Dartmouth's students. Your donations go directly to help fund programs ranging from one-on-one mentoring opportunities, to Habitat for Humanity programs, to intimate lunch discussions with professors.
The first ever Dartmouth College Festival of Humanity happened during Green Key Weekend this year, bringing together both the campus and Upper Valley communities for a day celebrating the arts and raising awareness about the issue of affordable housing in the Upper Valley. With support from a wide coalition of groups from all areas of campus, the Festival planning committee ensured a wonderful turnout for the event.
The Festival of Humanity featured twenty of Dartmouth's cultural and musical groups-from rock and bluegrass bands to poets, a-cappella groups, and dance ensembles. Don Derrick, the Executive Director of Upper Valley Habitat for Humanity, delivered the keynote address emphasizing the basic human need of decent shelter for all people. A free BBQ and activities for families and students ensured a plethora of people enjoying the atmosphere throughout the day.
Coinciding with the performance aspect and festival atmosphere, a silent auction was held under an outside tent. It included student crafts and artwork and contributions from community members, alumni and local businesses, in support of a service cause, this year Dartmouth Habitat's current project, a student-built house in Wilder, VT. Through the silent auction and other fund-raising activities, the Festival raised over $4,000 to go towards Dartmouth Habitat for Humanity's house.
"An event that simultaneously allows diverse groups and individuals to take ownership of a common project, celebrates the talent of fellow students, and brings the community together in a collective concern for service," said event organizer Mats Lemberger, "the Festival of Humanity will hopefully find a place in the hearts of Dartmouth and Upper Valley folks alike and continue to happen for years to come.”
Olivia Nunez
My DPCS internship at the Legal Aid Society in New York City this past fall was one of the most meaningful and fulfilling experiences I have ever been blessed with. As an assistant on their newest endeavor, the Education Advocacy Project (a project that ensures that children in foster care receive needed educational services), I was surrounded by individuals who dedicated their lives to the service of others. Due to the nature of our work, I was in contact with our clients on a regular basis. We frequently visited the children at the foster home and interviewed their parents to check on the children’s development and progress and to address any of the parents’ concerns.
I was constantly amazed by how open they were with us and how eager they were to do whatever they could to help their children. The work was certainly challenging and it was not always easy to go to work with a smile. There were so many children that needed so much and often what we could provide for them was only touching “the tip of the iceberg”. It hurt me to see so many who needed so much, not only academically but emotionally as well, and it frustrated me even more that I could not take away their pain, solve their problem or give them what they most needed and wanted. Despite these frustrations, I was often reminded and comforted by the knowledge that the little I could do was often very appreciated and very much needed. A proper education can open so many doors and these children deserved that and so much more. It is never easy to acknowledge that a problem cannot be solved immediately, but given time and the proper intervention, it can often be addressed appropriately. I was able to aid in this area. I saw and heard of the progress many of the children were making and this made everything worthwhile. I also had the great pleasure of being mentored by Sarah Webb ’02. Alumni mentoring is an integral component of the DPCS program.
The opportunity to participate in the Dartmouth Partners in Community Service (DPCS) program started me on my current path and continues to be a part of my life. In my junior year, my work with Upper Valley Habitat for Humanity caused me to wonder how the local affordable housing crisis was manifested nationally. Through DPCS, I accepted an internship at the National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH) in Washington, DC, where I learned that local affordable housing shortages were shaped by national policies and was exposed to national advocacy and organizing.
While at NCH, I learned about the Emerson National Hunger Fellowship program, a year-long fellowship that gives college graduates the opportunity to learn about low-income issues from both a field and national policy perspective. Feeling torn between local community work and national advocacy, the fellowship seemed like the perfect post-graduation option for me because it would give me an opportunity to continue to test out both. I entered the fellowship after graduation. The fellowship sent me to a community organization in Boise, Idaho and then back to the policy world of Washington, D.C.—familiar territory after my experience as a DPCS intern. In Washington, I worked at the Center for Community Change (CCC), a national organization that works with locally-based community organizing groups. After the fellowship ended, I was hired fulltime at CCC and am currently working on a project to engage low-income voters in the 2004 election.
I am also a DPCS “Alumni Mentor” to a Dartmouth ’05 who is interning at NCH. Talking with him about his Dartmouth experience and his experience as a DPCS intern has caused me to realize how directly my path has led from that initial experience in Washington to my current work. It feels great to bring my experience full-circle by continuing to be a part of the Dartmouth Partners in Community Service program.
Bill Cook
The most frequently quoted speech of Martin Luther King, Jr. centers on a dream---"I Have A Dream." Langston Hughes had earlier dealt with the same image in reference to African Americans in "Montage of a Dream Deferred." He asked:
What happens to a dream deferred
Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore and then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over -- like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
King came to Washington, the city in which he spoke of his dream, to demand the revival of that dream and the metaphor used by this master of the metaphor, was that of a promissory note; a check.
In a sense we've come to our nation's capitol to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir...It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check which has come back marked "Insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe the bank of justice is bankrupt...So we have come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand, the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now.
It was to avoid the drying up, the sagging, the festering and the explosion of the dream envisioned by Hughes that King entered the struggle for civil and human rights. The dream, as he outlined it, was in some ways quite conservative in that it was based on tradition and social stability, that it was aimed at restoring established institutions. It was radical in its rejection of gradual change in favor of the "fierce urgency of now." The dream, according to King, was rooted in the American Dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.
To trace the evolution of that dream and of Martin Luther King, Jr. its champion, I would like to take you to a time and setting different from that of the Hughes' poem in order to share with you the heritage in language and action that is King's gift to us, a heritage that is at base religious, but is also one which represents a convergence of the ideas of a number of dedicated human beings and that religious mandate felt by King. In 1929, the year of King's birth, Mohandas Karamchand Ghandi sent a message to Black Americans.
Let us not think of honor or dishonor in connection with the past. Let us realize that the future is with those who would be truthful, pure and loving. For, as the old wise men have said, truth ever is, untruth never was. Love alone binds and truth and love accrue to the truly humble.
Crisis, 7/29
In 1935, one of the number of Black American groups visited Ghandi. He asked them to sing "Were You There When They Crucified My Lord." After hearing the spiritual, he stated: "Perhaps it will be through the Negro that the unadulterated message of nonviolence will be delivered to the world." In 1959, King was one of a visiting group of Black Americans visiting Ghandi. King had read about Ghandi as a senior in theological seminary (he was persuaded to enter the ministry by the example of Reverend Benjamin Mays abandoning his plans for medical school) and was later to describe the effect of his meeting with the older man of peace in "Pilgrimage to Nonviolence" a sermon which he published in 1963. "To other countries I may go as a tourist, but to India I come as a pilgrim."
It should be clear that I am suggesting a central role for Ghandi in the shaping of King's ideas. Ghandi and his method of Satyagraha shaped King's views. King described the Selma march as parallel to Ghandi's march to the sea in defiance of British taxes. The mutality is however more complicated than this. Ghandi's ideas are in part his interpretation and application of the ideas of Thoreau. Henry David Thoreau and his mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson also had a part in the making of King; Gandhi serving as the mediator between the two. Note Ghandi on the influence of Thoreau:
you have given me a teacher in Thoreau, who furnished me
through his essay on the "Duty of Civil Disobedience" scientific confirmation
of what I was doing in South Africa. “To American Friends, 1942”
The essay, he argued, contained the essence of his political philosophy and his views of the relation of citizens to government.
In 1848, Thoreau published his essay "On The Duty of Civil Disobedience" an essay often paraphrased in King's speeches and in his writing. Thoreau's work was written in response to the existence of slavery in the U.S. and to the Mexican war. He spoke not only of the duty of civil disobedience, but of civil disobedience based on allegiance to a higher law, one which took precedence over man-made law whether that law be the Bible or the Constitution.
They who know of no purer sources of truth, who have traced up its stream no higher stand, and wisely stand, by the Bible and the Constitution, and drink at it there with reverence and humility; but they who behold where it comes trickling into this lake or that pool, gird up their loins once more, and continue their pilgrimage toward its fountain-head.
“King on Montgomery Bus Boycott”
At this point I began to think about Thoreau’s Essay on Civil Disobedience. I remembered how, as a college student, I had been moved when I first read this work. I became convinced that what we were preparing to do in Montgomery was related to what Thoreau had expressed. We were simply saying to the white community, “we can no longer lend our cooperation to an evil system” (Stride 429).
Divine revelation is not a finished work. It continues and is available to twentieth century individuals just as it was to an earlier age. Our loyalty must be to the revelation which we receive and not to the records we keep. By the same token, justice as found in the constitution, represents only a point of departure for us. We add to the record by our daily lives and in our enactment of justice in those lives. Such a view of truth leads, according to Thoreau, not to obedience to lower laws, those recorded in our secular and sacred texts, but to higher laws. It leads to action, not solely the action of voting; for that is only a statement of opinion, your opinion as to the just way. We must bring that justice into being by doing something.
Action from principle, the perception and the performance of right, changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was.
It may lead us to break the law.
If injustice is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.
It may lead us to prison.
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison...cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence.
In his 1965 speech before the New York Bar Association, King described himself a "a notorious litigant and frequenter of jails." He is a student of the Thoreau who insisted on living according to principle.
I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently
in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has
imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears
a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured
or far away.
King describes himself as a drum major for Christ realizing that this Thoreauvian view is not qualified.
If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon man's shoulders. I must get off him first.
This Thoreau argues is the way of peaceable revolution.
King saw a direct link between these ideas and those of Paul, one of the Biblical figures (the list prominently includes Moses) with whom he linked himself typologically. His sermon "Transformed Nonconformist" is based on Romans 12:2 "Be not conformed to this world; but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind"; is the utterance of a man who saw himself as Paul the exegete, explaining and interpreting doctrine; but more importantly, connecting that doctrine to the daily lives of those to whom he spoke. He sees a clear parallel between Pauline and Thoreauvian ideas.
We as Christians, have a mandate to be nonconformists... We are commanded to live differently and according to a higher loyalty.
In the sermon, he is especially critical of those churches which conform to the unjust uses of our society, one of which "enunciated and practiced racial exclusiveness."
The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists..in any cause that concerns the progress of mankind, put your faith in the nonconformists.
King cites Ralph W. Emerson's "self reliance "(whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist)" and closes with James R. Lowell's "Stanzas on Freedom."
They are slaves who dare not be In the right with two or three.
We do not need adjusted men, King argues: "We need today maladjusted men.”
In this regard, King's "Letter From a Birmingham Jail" can be read as a new testament of First Ephesians written from Paul's first imprisonment in Rome. In this letter, King addresses those religious leaders who felt that his actions were not proper for a cleric, he argues that "one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws," and condemns the church for its silence as well as those who appear to be more devoted to order than to justice.
The connection with Paul is even richer when we examine works not as canonical as the I Have A Dream Speech and Letter From a Birmingham Jail. King is the author of "Paul's Letter to American Christians." In this epistle he uses as a point of departure for his argument Romans and particularly Romans 12 in which Paul admonishes us to love one another and to use the talents we possess, whatever they may be, to do justice to other human beings. King wittily explains the origin of this heretofore “undiscovered” letter of Paul. He states that the letter was mailed to him and that when he opened it he was surprised to find that it was written in Greek. He translated it himself.
If the content of this epistle sounds strangely Kingian instead of Paulinian, attribute it to my lack of complete objectivity rather than Paul's lack of clarity.
The network of mutuality can be broadcast farther. On August 27, 1963 a day before the March on Washington Speech was delivered, W. E.B DuBois died. Having lost faith in any real improvement in the U.S., duBois died a citizen of Ghana. King eulogized DuBois in 1968 at Carnegie Hall. His speech makes for fascinating reading, for King might well be describing himself.
Though he had more academic credentials than most Americans, black or white, he moved South where a majority of Negroes then lived. He deliberately chose to share their daily abuse and humiliation. He could have offered himself to the white rulers and exacted substantial tribute for selling his genius...He could have amassed riches and honors and lived in material splendor and applause from the powerful and important men of his time. Instead, he lived part of his creative life in the South -- most of it in modest means and some of it in poverty and he died in exile, praised sparingly and in many circles ignored. DuBois the man needs to be remembered today when despair is all too prevalent. In the years he lived and fought there was far more justification for frustration and hopelessness and yet his faith in his people never wavered.
Dr. Dubois has left us but he has not died. The spirit of freedom is not buried in the grave of the valiant. He will be with us when we go to Washington in April to demand our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
The words and the accomplishments of the movement which Martin Luther King Jr. led are current events still, they live within our memory and have reshaped the way in which we respond to a range of political, moral and ethical problems. He gave us a language and a mode of operation drawn from a network of influences. His ideas and his rhetoric represent connection, the perception of unity and, like orthodox transcendentalism, the absence of evil. Unity was his center. When he accepted the Nobel Prize in 1964, King ended his speech with yet another example of his genius at yoking, at showing us connections. After a powerful series of parallel statements (anaphora being one of his favorite oratorical figures) which brought his audience to its feet, he closed with a nod to John Keats.
I accept this award in the spirit of a curator of some precious heirloom which he holds in trust for its true owners --all those to whom beauty is truth and truth beauty.
We are less familiar with the words and activities that represented for King a logical extension of his concerns, concerns present in his thought from his earliest public statements -- concerns centered on the fate of humankind all over the globe and concerns centered on the unthinkable horror of modern warfare. I use "logical extension" here to counter critics like Carl Rowan who felt that King's anti-war activities in particular represented a shift in concern, a deserting of his original aims. For King the fate of Black Americans and of all Americans was inextricably bound to worldwide problems of poverty, racism and increased concern with things rather than people; a deadly certainty that war was an acceptable method of resolving differences. These concerns are part of a network of inescapable mutuality not changes in direction. They are clearly enunciated in "Where Do We Go From Here." 1967
Equality with whites will not solve the problems of either whites or Negroes if it means equality in a world society stricken by poverty and in a universe doomed to extinction by way...All inhabitants of the globe are now neighbors....so much of modern life can be summarized in that suggestive phrase of Thoreau "improved means to an unimproved end." ...when scientific power outruns moral power, we end up with guided missiles and misguided men...One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek but a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means...This may well be mankind's last chance to choose between chaos and community. “WDWGFH: Chaos or Community”
These logical extensions were clear in his sermon to clergy and laymen concerning Vietnam in April 1967 at Riverside Church. Here he focused on inner truth...the mandates of conscience and the duty to speak from the burning of the heart.
A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the Poverty Program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the build up in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube.
They were restated in his Veteran's Day speech in 1968. There he likened his opposition to the war and to all wars to the action of Emerson and Thoreau in their opposition to the Mexican War, to the young congressman Abraham Lincoln's denunciation of that war in Congress and to Grant's considering resigning his army commission in order to protest the injustice of that war. There is an inescapable mutuality in ideas and in the tradition of resistance.
In January of 1968, the last year of his life, King spoke to the congregation at Ebenezer Baptist church not only on his allegiance to the principles by which he had lived, but also about his willingness to lay down his life for them. He provided them with a most apt obituary.
I want to say that I tried to love and to serve humanity Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major. Say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. Say that I was a drum major for righteousness. And all the other, shallow things will not matter...I just want to leave a committed life behind.
Like Moses he was possessed of a vision and a mission.
Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And he's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the promised land...So, I'm happy tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."
My closing words come from Thornton Wilder's Mr. Antrobus at the conclusion of a terrible war. He has not lost his dream.
I have never forgotten for a moment that living is struggle. Every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor edge of danger and must be fought for...Whether it is a field, a home or a country....All I ask is the chance to build new worlds and God has always given us that. And has given us voices to guide us; and the memory of our mistakes to warn us.
King reminds us that we live in a network of inescapable mutuality; our ideas and our actions are shared and alive; we, they, are linked, are one. His is our sustaining voice. These words were typed on a card and left on King’s desk by an “inarticulate young man” early one morning in the early days of the Montgomery Boycott.
I sought my soul, but my soul I could not see,
I sought my God but he eluded me,
I sought my brother and I found all three
“The Eagle that is Forgotten”
Sleep softly…eagle forgotten…under the stone
Time has its way with you there, and the clay has its own
“We have buried him now” thought your foes, and in secret
rejoiced
They made a brave show of their mourning, their hatred unvoiced.
They had snarled at you, barked at you, day after day.
Now you were ended. They praised you,…and laid you away.
The others that mourned you in silence in terror and truth
The widow bereft of her crust, and the boy without youth
The mocked and the mourned and the wounded, the lamed and the poor
That should have remembered forever…remember no more.
Where are those lovers of yours, on what name do they call
The lost, that in armies wept over your funeral pall?
They call on the names of a hundred high valiant ones,
A hundred white eagles have risen, the sons of your sons,
The zeal in their wings is a zeal that your dreaming began
The valor that wore out your soul in the service of man.
Sleep softly…eagle forgotten…under the son
Time has its way with you there, and the clay has its own
Sleep on, O brave-hearted, O wise man that kindled the flame
To live in mankind is far more than to live in a name,
To live in mankind is far, far more…than to live in a name.
(Vachel Lindsay)
Jenny Sharfstein
Jenny Sharfstein is from New York City. She currently serves on the Dartmouth Community Services Executive Team as Fellow for Public Relations and Recognition. Since her freshman year, she has volunteered through the ABE (Adult Basic Education) program at Hannah House in Lebanon, NH. Hannah House provides a home for pregnant, mothering teenage girls and offers childbirth and mothering training and G.E.D. (General Equivalency Test) preparation courses for the girls.
For many of the girls who live there, Hannah House is a last resort after foster care or abandonment by their family members. As Sharfstein notes, “Working with the girls from Hannah House is much more than an education program, but really a mentoring opportunity where you can really form personal connections and become an important person in someone else’s life.” After working as a mentor and tutor for several years, Sharfstein realized that a set study hour program would greatly benefit the girls. Sharfstein along with a core number of Dartmouth students visit Hannah House four times a week, for an hour each day, to tutor the girls in anything from G.E.D. prep to algebra, geometry, critical thinking, or problem-solving skills.
Jamie Kennedy, an ’04 Sociology major, has always wanted to be a teacher. Her passion for forging connections with children is especially visible in her work as the chair of The Dartmouth Alliance for Children of Color. This particularly unique campus organization allows white parents who are raising children of color (through adoption, interracial marriage, etc.) to learn more about the specific needs associated with those children. The program also allows the children to interact with members of their respective races –people of color that they might not otherwise run into in the Upper Valley.
The organization serves about 75 families, 25 of whom are consistent participants. Each Monday from 3:30 to 5:30, the families meet in The Cutter/Shabazz lounge to play and participate in educational activities aimed at increasing each child’s awareness of his/her respective culture. Jamie’s involvement entails creating the program’s budget and weekly themes and forming the primary relationships with the parents and the children participants. More significantly, though, Jamie is changing lives—parents approach her with questions ranging in importance from hair care to how she would go about raising a child of color. Likewise, through the preparation of programs that focus on important cultural leaders, historical components of cultural movements, and music traditional to specific cultures, she is affecting parents’ and children’s mindsets on race and equality. She introduces the children to books and cartoons that feature faces similar to their own. She introduces them to minority mentors and role models, a crucial component of the program, considering that the children might not see positive minority images anywhere else. When asked about the legacy she will be leaving behind, she smiles. “Well, it’s a lot greater than I realized,” she says. Judging from the children’s faces at a typical DACC gathering, I imagine she’s right.
The mission of the Bildner Urban Summer Internship Program is to engage Dartmouth students in community service within a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, and multi-socioeconomic, urban community -- working with the Boys & Girls Clubs of Newark in personal and educational development initiatives, social as well as cultural enrichment goals, and, recreation programs designed to enrich and inspire the lives of youth.
The Bildner Urban Summer Program is a non-profit internship offered by the Tucker Foundation in collaboration with the Boys and Girls Clubs of Newark, NJ. Each summer, a diverse group of Dartmouth students embark on a challenging and transforming experience that encourages them to step outside of their comfort zones and interact in an environment foreign to many of them. This internship builds awareness and sensitivity towards the multi-racial and multi-ethnic makeup of urban communities as well as the differences in socio-economic class. Dartmouth students provide mentorship and academic support to Newark youth through instructing classes in language arts, mathematics and science as well as participating in self-esteem enhancement programs.
The summer of 2003 proved to be particularly challenging yet very rewarding for the seven Dartmouth interns that traveled down to Newark, New Jersey. These students took on the rigorous task of formulating their own curriculums and teaching methods to engage the attention and enthusiasm of students ranging from Kindergarten to ninth grade. These impressive students accepted the challenge and demonstrated a profound commitment to communicating knowledge to the kids, whom they became deeply attached to. Dartmouth students were afforded a tremendous opportunity to affect change in the lives of young people and also gained an invaluable amount of knowledge about urban lifestyles that continues to educate them about the misrepresentations of urban communities. As Shermaine Jones '06, a summer 2003 intern noted:
“Many interns expressed that this summer was a transforming experience that forced them to question their position of privilege within the American social structure. This questioning made them initially uncomfortable but forced them to admit the obvious and devastating differences that exist between their lifestyles and that of their students. For some interns the experience made them redirect their thinking and change their perspectives on race, class, stereotypes, and socio-economical structures. Many interns plan to dedicate a part of their lives to the uplifting of minority communities that are affected by poverty and poor education.”
Atlanta, my newest hometown, celebrates the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Junior’s life of service with a memorial visitor’s center. I visited soon after moving here. As I read descriptions of his work and listened to the recordings of his voice, I felt the same optimism and energy that I always felt when exploring a new service project at Dartmouth. I served as a Dartmouth Partners in Community Service Intern with two organizations during my college years. At Boston Health Care for the Homeless, I assisted in caring for patients in clinics, in shelters, and on the winter streets of Boston. At the Upper Valley Housing Coalition, I brought together leaders from housing organizations and local faith communities to reduce the region’s affordable housing shortage.
Now, because of my Dartmouth service, I seek out that sense of energy. I decided to pursue education in medicine and public health after witnessing the grace and creativity with which the Boston clinicians served their patients. Currently, I work at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researching the epidemiology of several parasitic diseases. I am also participating in the alternately exhilarating and humbling experience of interviewing for medical school. Each day I am immersed in scientific and social analyses of debilitating diseases, but I feel the same sense of possibility that I found so sustaining in my Dartmouth service.
This July, 30-40 rising sophomores from high schools in Dorchester (MA), Enfield
(NH), Albany (NY), Spartanburg (SC), and a Native American reservation outside
of Anadarko (OK), will come to campus for their first of three summers as part
of the Summer Enrichment at Dartmouth (SEAD) Program. The members of the SEAD
Class of 2006 (the year the students will complete the program) represent the
most diverse group of students that SEAD has worked with thus far, bringing together
students from both urban (Boston, Albany) and rural (Spartanburg, Enfield, Anadarko)
backgrounds with a variety of different experiences.
During the first three years (the pilot stage) of the program, SEAD worked with
cohorts of students from schools in Dorchester (MA), Enfield (NH), and Philadelphia
(PA). Roughly 10 students came from each school. The new class includes the same
schools from Dorchester and Enfield, while also welcoming students from South
Carolina, upstate New York, and Oklahoma. Each school will send six to eight
students.
Since 2001, SEAD has worked with students from under-resourced urban and rural
areas in order to expand their view of what is possible and to motivate them
to consider post-secondary education opportunities. SEAD is always looking for
energetic Dartmouth students to help work toward this mission. Sophomores are
greatly needed during their sophomore summer to be mentors, help tutor, or participate
in a variety of activities that will be planned for the SEAD students. Those
interested can blitz “SEAD”
or go to www.dartmouth.edu/~sead
for more information on what they can do to help.
Why? Why do it? Why use your winter break to wake up at 5 AM, sweat and work all day, take cold showers, chance Montezuma's Revenge, and go to the second poorest nation in the Americas? For the volunteers that participated on the 2003 Cross-Cultural Education and Service Project to Siuna, Nicaragua there could be no other reason than love.
We came from all over the country, different backgrounds, beliefs, informed perspectives, and talents, and we were united in love. We were Dartmouth undergraduates, Dartmouth medical students, Thayer engineering students, faculty, and administrators. We came together in Siuna, each contributing talents and personalities to affect tangible as well as (and more importantly) inner human change.
We worked along-side thirteen university students from Nicaragua for thirteen
days. We hiked, forded rivers, mixed cement, carried rocks up hills, laid cinder
blocks, and constructed three compost latrines that will service an entire community
of families. We cleared land, tilled, dug, planted, fenced, and created large
garden plots on farms that will be important sources of nutrition, especially
for the children whose diets are insufficient and poorly balanced. We examined,
diagnosed, treated, and cared for hundreds of patients with both home visits
and in a rural clinic, providing medical care for patients who cannot afford
the luxury of ever seeing a doctor. Education about health and hygiene were also
key components of our health team’s contribution to the community.
Most importantly we worked, ate, and lived with the people we served. It wasn't
just about the materials or the money that we could bring to the area, but about
the connections and bonds that we created with another culture and people; friendships
that foster cross-cultural and human understanding and the overcoming of difference.
The program and experience of Nicaragua was expressed to me the day we left to begin our journey back to the U.S. As we were walking a final fifteen minutes to the main road, Yasainki, a young boy of 15, with tears gathering in his eyes, waved bye, turned, and walked away. In four days of working and playing, a real friendship was formed. It really hurt to know that I would never see him again. For those of us that participated on the CCESP trip to Nicaragua, we left behind more than latrines, gardens, or medicine. Our legacy is in our love.