By SHANNON MARCOUX
I had the privilege of spending my spring break in Camden, N.J., a city that has been completely taken over by poverty, crime, the drug trade and overall urban decay.
As part of the service and immersion program in which I took part, I spent my days at service sites, a different one each day, and my nights participating in activities that were meant to open my mind to issues facing Camden. One of these activities was playing Monopoly. Yes, Monopoly.
This was not ordinary Monopoly, however. Each player started with a different amount of money. Some started with an exorbitant amount of cash and several properties. Others were not as lucky. I started the game having inherited no property and without enough cash to purchase even the cheapest property on the board.
In addition to the varying degrees of wealth among us, we were also each given a specific role to play. I was a poor person who was reliant upon charity to survive. Each role was unique, and one role in particular stood out to me as notable.
Player number three would advocate for the importance of charity and helping the poor, and she even helped me out once by paying off my debt to the wealthy, greedy landlord. But, the next time I needed assistance, she refused to help. Her words were advocating for charity and understanding, but her actions were ignoring the needs of the poor. At the conclusion of the game, we were supposed to share the description of our role with the group. Number three read her role to the group.
She was an upper-middle class woman who was born into favorable circumstances and believed strongly that she should help the poor. However, she was not supposed to help the poor if it meant going against what was ideal for her or if it was too strenuous on her financially (meaning something that would bring her down from upper middle class to lower middle class).
I realized that I was so intrigued by the three role, out of the six players in the game, because there are a lot of threes in my life. Many of the adults I know, my parents included, fall into the category of upper-middle class, and believe that both charity and the pursuit of social justice are important. However, their capacity of generosity is extremely limited in the grand scheme of things. They say they believe in certain ideals, but they are not willing to be challenged to give of themselves in a more significant way. I decided that I did not want to be a three. I did not want to be someone who was charitable only when it is convenient.
More important than realizing what kind of person I want (or do not want) to be is recognizing that talk is cheap. I am certainly not the only person who spent a week in an unfamiliar area, experiencing social justice issues in a new way and making grand statements about wanting the fix the world. I want to know how many of us, the volunteers, the do-gooders, will bring our trips back with us. What will we change? Will we live differently or will we fall back into the chaos of classes, extracurriculars, friends and work?
I want to challenge us to remain aware of the issues to which we were exposed. I want us to recognize that, even if we built a house or helped in some other substantial way, we did not do enough. The work does not end when we get on the plane or the bus. We have to bring the awareness that we gained to our everyday life.
I want to challenge everyone who has gone on some service trip to volunteer regularly—not to fit volunteering around your schedule, but to make it a part of your schedule.
I challenge you to think of how your decision to purchase a $10 dress may impact the life of someone you met in Ecuador. I challenge you to think about the distinction between charity and justice, and to find a way to incorporate both into your life. Think about your education not as a burden, an obligation or a waste of time; see it for what it really is—a privilege. Be aware of how the car you are driving or the disposable silverware you are using is contributing to the environmental issues you encountered in South America.
This is not meant to be a guilt trip or a pessimistic rant about how we are never doing enough. Rather, this is a challenge to take what you have probably at some point called “a life changing experience,” and allow it to do just that.
Allow it to change your life in a meaningful way. Permit it to permeate your everyday life. If thinking about the people you met and the issues you encountered regularly depresses you, see it as a calling or a challenge to do something to change it.
College students often refer to the “real world” as something outside of their current time and place. We are here and the “real world” is out there somewhere. The real world is not out there; it is here.
You can make meaningful change now if you so choose, so challenge yourself to allow your life to be changed by your service experiences and use that personal change to change the world.
Shannon Marcoux is Editorial Director at The Fordham Ram.
