[Alumni-chat] What will the BOT do?

Tue Sep 4 09:08:39 EDT 2007

Yes, but this isn't about you and me.  It's not about my co-op in New York or your experience coming out of Fairmont High.  It's about the situated learning of 18-22 year olds in a world (and worldview) that has changed significantly since either of us went to school.  

Bob

>In a message dated 9/3/2007 7:54:53 P.M. Central Daylight Time,
>alumni-chat_forum at antiochians.org writes:
>
>Sally,
>
>That's why you're neither a college administrator nor a  Co-op faculty
>member.  Cost of living in urban centers where there are  concentrations of jobs,
>housing, alums, transportation, etc. has skyrocketed,  whereas entry-level wages
>have not. And remember, the Co-op program is not for  you, but for 18-22
>year-olds in a culture that encourages them to seek  meaningful engagement through
>community service and a host of other activities  that are far in excess of
>anything that might have been available to me in my  high school years.  You
>may scoff at "meaningful", but I can assure you  that students (a) are far more
>worldly than college-aged students of the 50s,  (b) are more engaged in the
>civic life of the community (see Nie and Hillygus'  study in Ravitch and
>Viteritti's "Making Good Citizens: Education and Civil  Society", and Colby, Ehrlich,
>Beaumont and Stephens, "Educating Citizens") and  (c) are indeed interesting
>in investing energies in ways that will make a  difference.  So I guess
>you'll just have to scoff at 18 year olds and  the culture that produced
>them.
>
>
>
>Again, on the net I prefer to be called Sistersara.
>
>Look, my first job, six months out of Fairmont High School in Kettering  O
>hio, (I plan to attend my 50th reunion at the end of this month and as they  have
>it planned -- March from the endzone to mid field when they announce my  name
>as part of my class) -- anyhow, that first job was as a case aid and group
>worker at the Cabrini Housing Project in near North Side Chicago.  The  place
>they have been tearing down and all over the last decade.  I used  three city
>busses to get to the job, and three to get back after 10 in the  evening, to
>where I was living on the West Side, where once a week, I  participated in
>another job.  My "other job" was about documenting how the  real estate folk were
>about frightening the elderly orthodox Jewish Community  around Garfield Park
>to sell out for virtually nothing, and then let them chop  up the apartments or
>houses into mini places for maxi numbers of black  renters.  Our project
>regularly had industrial staples shot through our  windows.  One landed in a chair
>where I had been sitting like ten seconds  after I got up to answer the
>phone.  We also had the back exit and porch  burned off the place.  We had tires on
>our VW slashed.  And yes, this  was an Antioch Co-op Job in spring, 1958.  I
>was paid about 50 dollars a  week for this experience, and as I see my life
>now -- it was worth a zillion  more.  It sure wasn't like Kettering.
>
>
>Bob, I decided years ago after having administered a Civil Rights
>organization for about nine years, and then having set up and helped administer  an AIDS
>service organization (and raise the money) that I never want to  administer
>anything more than me and my Siberian Husky ever again.   (MCR&R was a board of
>34 Bishops or denominational presidents) -- You all  think trying to move the
>BoT this or that way is an issue.  Well, try  moving a Cardinal.  Try to make
>that movement be congruent with what four  sorts of Lutherans want to do,
>some of whom want to change a word or two in  honor of Martin Luther.  The
>Cardinal had never sat down to dine with the  local Rabbi -- but eventually the
>language of Vatican II suggested he might  consider that, and the luncheon,
>arranged with the guy who wrote the Prayer for  Patton in the movie (yep, real, and
>he was one of my bosses) as the host, went  off, the Rabbi's all brought their
>wives, and the Cardinal agreed that wives  were a nice idea.  From that point
>on, it took them ten minutes to agree on  every inch of the civil rights
>agenda as it stood then.
>
>Bob, you did not do 9 months in Cabrini that eventually led to my really
>"classy" Civil Rights job. post Antioch.  One night at Cabrini one of my 9  year
>old girls in one of my groups came running into the center and grabbed me  and
>was frantic.  Her older sister had just murdered her pimp in the  apartment.
>Help was needed.  Did you ever figure that out when you  were an 18 year old
>Antioch Co-op?  Like maybe 8 months out of Fairmont  Hi?  -- but yea, I found
>the sister a lawyer from U of Chicago, and he came  and met the cops at the
>scene, and while she had to spend a couple of days in  jail, he got the charged
>knocked way down to justifiable homicide, and no jail  time.  Of course the
>family I was dealing with had no knowledge of how to  get a lawyer, let alone
>what utility a lawyer might have, and why I  wanted the lawyer to be present or
>on the way before the cops touched the  scene.  I sure didn't learn all that
>at Fairmont Hi.  In fact I had a  very meaningful First Co-op Job.  There are
>millions like that today, and  some of them even pay fairly well.
>
>And Bob I did Administer something like a co-op program for a couple of
>years.  I started with 60 U of MN students working either as  lobbyists for
>non-profits or researchers for individual members of the  state legislature, Huge
>requirements for readings, seminar attendence, papers  and all the rest -- plus
>at least 12 hours per week sitting in on relevant  hearings and all.  Kept it
>up for a couple of years, expanded beyond the U  of MN to a ten college
>consortium.  But I prefer  teaching History.   Activism is skill, but History is
>really  art.
>
>Again, my internet name is Sistersara.
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