The Power of Proximity

As we move our division (and by extension college) in the direction of poverty-informed, it has become a personal journey as well. The beginning of our poverty-informed work focused on our three pillars: meeting basic needs: creating a sense of belonging and self-efficacy, and acceleration to stability, but we quickly realized this was informed and changed by proximity to the students we serve. One of the dangers of a career in administration is students can become an abstraction, rather than the fully realized human beings they actually are. Our efforts to meet basic needs like our community food bowl (The Bowl), regularly put me in proximity and conversation with students, in different ways. It has transformed how I do my work, and I'd like to try to explain why, so you might go down the same path. So, let me tell you about one of those students. Her name is Sarah, and she is my friend.

If you read these articles regularly (and thank you for that), you've met Sarah (Sarah's story). That's

Sarah and the author

us a few months ago in the lobby of my building on campus. Sarah and I met when she participated in our YouthBuild project while earning her HSED on campus. I've told the story before, but our first real conversation was when our project coordinator asked me to come out and meet with Sarah because she was very upset about something she perceived as unfair that day. It was a brief conversation, and she was very upset, but I was struck by her sense of justice and her intelligence. Sarah has an extreme extrovert's personality, so I knew of her at school because she made frequent stops in our front office, and her teachers also spoke of her often. Sarah was open with them in sharing things she had been through which would bring most of us to our knees. I began to develop an admiration for her, but if I'm honest, it was all at a "safe" distance for me. Sarah was a story, an idea, but in reality, she is so much more than that.

Dr. Donna Beegle tells her personal story and talks about the danger that she could have been written off because her grammar didn't meet middle class expectations when she went to college in her 20's. Getting to know Sarah has reminded me of that story frequently. She grew up in Kentucky and Indiana in trying circumstances, and her use of language can make you forget to notice how kind of brilliant she actually is. But somewhere along the line, Sarah decided I needed to get to know her, and I was blown away by the depth of her knowledge, and the breadth of her interests. She would stop by my office to discuss something about school, and before I knew it, she would be helping me understand the challenges of living in a town where finding a reasonable place to live at a reasonable price is difficult. She is well versed in current events and has no shortage of opinions on how things can be improved. I started to change the way I saw her, and I watched others see her differently as well. Sarah can be very direct and sometimes talks about things you wouldn't expect to talk about at school (she announced she was going to be an aunt in a way that made me blush), but she is direct, compassionate, and genuine. I watched her progress and struggle through our Wood Tech program, and I watched her change our behavior as we looked forward to her daily visits. Our version of being poverty-informed is to suspend judgment, and Sarah is a walking, breathing example of why we must. If we had written her off, we would have missed out on so much.

Sarah earned a certificate in cabinetmaking this spring and started pursuing a degree in Human Services as well. She volunteers extensively at her church and is a tireless advocate for people who are homeless. I often think about the young woman I met in YouthBuild and what my honest expectations were for her. I'm not sure the previous version of me would have seen everything Sarah had to offer the world. It seems significant to me and an important element of becoming truly poverty-informed. You need proximity to the people you serve, you need to be partners in their dreams. We are not searching for diamonds in the rough who can meet our expectations, we are trying to open our eyes and see the strengths students like Sarah bring to our college and the world. Can you see the difference? I think it's what the folks at Amarillo College mean when they say, "Love the students you have." You don't "kind of like them", "be surprised what they can do", or turn them into mascots... You LOVE them and all their outrageous humanity and raw courage. You eliminate the word "enabling" from your vocabulary, and you work to get people what they need.

This last picture was in my office on Friday. It feels different, right? The earlier picture is of a dean

Having fun

and a student who told him he could tell her story as best he understood it. The second picture is of Chad and Sarah. We are partners in seeing what we can become. We learn from each other and frustrate each other and care about each other. I worry that Sarah thinks she needs to go back to work as a carnival worker to make ends meet, and she sincerely worries that my lack of organized religion puts me at risk of eternal damnation. Actually, she kind of rocked my world Friday on that front. Faith has been an important part of Sarah's life, and I respect that. I have a different set of beliefs, and we talk about that from time to time. On Friday, she was concerned about the consequences of my beliefs and her eyes lit up when she asked me how we get snacks each week in the division. I told her one of the ways is I go shopping every Sunday and help stock up. She said. "so you are tithing..." and seemed relieved I may not be a lost cause after all. So, if you aspire to a poverty-informed approach that really gives different results, you don't have to be friends with people you serve, but I believe you do need to find a way to be in proximity to them and the truth of their stories. I believe you may have to take a risk and give up your "safe" distance. And if you are lucky, you might make a friend like Sarah.