I'm Scared of "the New Normal"

So, if you read these articles regularly, you've met my friend Sarah (Sarah's story). I've been thinking a lot about her during recent weeks as we have all had to retreat due to the pandemic. I know she's safe, but she's home alone, and she just became an online student even though she didn't want to be. We chat on Facebook, but I worry she's isolated and isolation isn't good for anyone, but maybe Sarah more than most. Sarah has a gift for connecting with people, so being unable to go to church, or help people who are homeless (her great passion), or attend school in person must be really hard for her. So, I'm thinking about Sarah, but I'm thinking more about what she's taught me, and I'm afraid the world might lose that lesson when we come out of our current crisis. I have a dream of co-presenting with Sarah around the country on the realities of poverty and how it intersects with education and everything else. I want to do this work with her because she's been one of my great teachers, and what she's taught me more than anything is the power of proximity. I even wrote about it once before (proximity article), and I'm afraid our current circumstances are going to cause us to lose the importance of this fundamental need to fight poverty.

Sarah is my friend, but we are certainly different. I'm old enough to be her Dad for one, and we grew up differently. I grew up in a mix of situational and working-class poverty, and Sarah grew up in much tougher circumstances. I knew in theory there were different kinds of poverty, and they impact people differently, but Sarah made that theory real for me. Sarah is a person of deep personal faith, and I am not, but she's never given up on trying to fix that flaw in me:) Where Sarah really started to change things for me was when we started talking about how to work with the people around our campus who were homeless. I wasn't sure where to start, but Sarah knew them, and she made sure I did too. She took me (and others) to the Hospitality House right next to the administrative center at my old college. We didn't go to volunteer; we just went with my friend Sarah to meet people. We went to be in proximity to the truth of their stories and their humanity. This led to joining Sarah at Sacred Grounds, a coffee sanctuary where she also helped people who were struggling. I often went with my friend Mandy, and people began to think we might be Sarah's parents... I am not exaggerating one iota when I say being in proximity to the people Sarah knew changed everything for me. Never again have I walked past someone on the street without making eye contact and saying hello if it seemed appropriate. Sarah connected me to people in such a way that I didn't even notice my colleagues looking at me during a recent trip to Nashville when I gave my leftovers to someone living on the street and engaged in a brief conversation. My colleagues are good people, but Sarah had changed my world view, and I forgot my behavior might catch my colleagues off guard. I even sent Sarah a note thanking her for making me a better person during the trip. My friend putting me in proximity to people living outside my norms was powerful, so of the many things I'm terrified of during our pandemic, one of the greatest is we will lose our ability to relate and connect.

I can see it already. I was at Walgreen's a week ago, and I noticed the man sitting by the door. I was emotionally overwhelmed at the contrast between me stocking up on medicine, and him appearing to have nowhere to go. I stopped (as has become my habit) said hello and asked if he needed anything. He declined and settled down next to the building. I had watched several other people walk by him and steer clear and do everything they could to not "see" him. We cannot lose the ability to see each other. This feels like the danger to me as we must practice physical distancing (I refuse to say social distancing because we must still engage socially with whatever tools we have). I cannot stop thinking about the societal divisions becoming more apparent in these times. Some of us can stock up on groceries, and retreat to homes in relative safety, while others are losing jobs, homes, healthcare, or more. The thin nature of the fabric holding our society together is being exposed. Even in my industry of higher education, we know our changes will leave the most vulnerable more exposed than ever. We try with every tool we have, but we are forced to provide online courses to people who go home to places with one device shared between children and adults all trying to go to "school", if they are lucky. If they are less lucky, we are stuck with giving them advice like, "the wifi is still accessible from the parking lot or next to the building." If you wonder why the community and technical colleges were the last to close, it's because our mission is to serve exactly the people being hurt most directly. Even our best solutions are inadequate, and I'm afraid if we lose proximity to these stories we will forget, and we will go backwards.

I'm worried about the fragility of my friend Sarah who has been battling the crisis of poverty herself as long as I've known her. I'm worried she doesn't have what she needs to succeed in school, because a switch to online is a struggle. I'm worried her teachers won't get the proximity to her I was lucky enough to have, and they won't understand how remarkable she really is. I'm worried in a world of typed communication, her syntax and grammar will obscure her giant heart, and her desire to change the world. I guess I'm just really worried the loss of proximity we are all being forced to endure will separate us in ways we may not recover from. I'm afraid distance makes detachment too easy, and people will retreat into their own struggles and assign blame to choices they don't understand. That blame can lead to judging and as my friend and mentor Dr. Donna Beegle always says "If you are judging, you cannot connect. If you cannot connect, you cannot communicate. If you cannot communicate, you cannot break poverty barriers." For those of us worried about poverty barriers, this loss of proximity is terrifying.

This crisis will pass. I'm not a scientist or doctor, but I trust those who are when they say we are going to go through hard times before it passes. I'm not dismissing what's to come, but I am thinking about what comes after. We will have choices. We can choose to retreat further into a world of those who "have" and can protect themselves, and those who "don't have" and suffer greater and greater consequences. We can call it the "new normal" and say there is nothing we can do about it. This kind of detachment is a vision of the future which feels far too likely and scares the heck out of me. I have always believed human nature is fundamentally good, and times like this will put my belief to the test. We do have another choice. We can realize how interconnected we all really are, just like my friend Sarah has always known. We can realize our fate is only as good as the fate of those with the least among us. We can stay in proximity (emotionally if not physically), and we can just do better. So when the next virus comes, and we have to retreat to our safe spaces to take care of each other, we can feel like there are spaces for all. And we can feel like we aren't leaving our most vulnerable students with inadequate tools to make the changes they are working so hard for. So, I'm afraid of the ''new normal" if it means I forget the lessons my friend Sarah has taught me. I promise her I won't forget, and I'm challenging you to not forget either.

It's an Emergency

As I've talked more and more about the idea of poverty informed practice, the concept has solidified around three ideas for me: Meeting basic needs, creating a sense of belonging, and supporting people just when they need it to accelerate their progress. I've been using a "poverty-informed" triangle for a while, but I updated it for my recent presentation at Achieving the Dream. Instead of talking about belonging and belief, I've boiled it down to creating environments where people don't just feel "welcome", but rather know they are wanted. It might seem small, but I think it's an important distinction. If you are somewhere in my age range, you can remember when we used the word "tolerance" a lot talking about diversity and inclusion. When I think about that word now, it seems so patronizing to tell someone you would "tolerate" their differences from you. My prediction is we will feel the same way about the word "welcome" before too long. So, our college is shifting from saying everyone is "welcome" to making sure students know they are "wanted", especially if they have felt unwanted elsewhere. It goes beyond poverty, but it is definitely informed by poverty. Students in the crisis of poverty often feel as if they aren't really supposed to be on campus; we are going to make sure they know it is exactly where we want them to be. And it has me thinking about other well-intentioned efforts many of us get wrong.

On the right side of the triangle is the idea of accelerating progress and supporting people "just-in-time." Much of the support is academic, but for me it broadens out to emergency support and basic needs support as well. I'm pleased to say there are campuses all over my state and the country with food pantries, grab-and-go food, and emergency funds to bridge the moments that prevent students from succeeding. But I also know we live in culture which wants to make poverty a character flaw instead of a context. And because this point of view is baked in deep, we inadvertently build systems in opposition to their stated purpose. Emergency funds are a great illustration of how we can get this wrong in my opinion. My college has a number of emergency funds, most of which existed before I arrived, but I am proud to say we built one in my first semester through an internal campaign as well. My only request was that it have the lowest possible barriers to student access. In essence, I wanted to say if a student asks for help, we believe them, and they get it. My history says this will be a difficult ask.

I have had to evolve on this issue over the years. 20 years ago, I bought into the idea of teaching "financial literacy" as a primary strategy to help students in financial crisis. I reject that idea now. I often see emergency funds coming out of offices with the term "financial literacy" attached to them. Let me be exceedingly clear, financial literacy works very well for people with money, but in my opinion, it is a bankrupt concept (no pun intended) for people in the crisis of poverty. You cannot manage or be literate about that which you do not have and implying that becoming more "literate" is the solution transfers the blame to the person in crisis. You can see the hard wiring of blaming the poor for being poor. So, when I see "emergency" funds coupled with financial counseling or with literacy workshops, I get kind of irate. This sort of "help" feels like lecturing a gunshot victim on ducking faster before you stop the bleeding. it's ineffective at best and damaging at worst. I know a number of students who stopped going for help because it felt dehumanizing. The irony is the people giving out the assistance genuinely see themselves as good people and helpers. I'm angry at myself for my attitude 20 years ago, and I'm angry at so many emergency aid programs today.

So, what do you do? Well Dr. Sara Goldrick-Rab built the gold standard model with her Faculty and Students Together (FAST) fund, which essentially operates on a sort of "rich uncle" model, where help comes directly to students and does not impact their financial aid. I'm hoping the faculty union at my college will explore pursuing that model, but in the meantime there are ways to run your emergency funds better, even if they aren't gold standard. Number one, stop making people ask multiple times for help. Let's set the default to if you have the courage and vulnerability to ask, we just believe you and get you what you need. If this makes you immediately think people will take advantage, I'd challenge you to examine your view of people. Do you really think people will "abuse" such a system, and if so, how many? Even if there is a percentage, is building barriers worth telling the 95% of people who just need help we think they are suspect and need to be screened. Do we really think there is a benefit to making them tell their story multiple times, and then wait to see if they "qualify?" It is an emergency! That's why we call them emergency funds. The second thing I would do is challenge us to think about how we talk about the students we serve who access these services. Do you know how often, I've heard someone referred to as a "good bet" or "bad bet"? Isn't that dehumanizing and awful? Can you imagine having the vulnerability to say you need help, and how you would feel if you knew people went in another room and decided if you were worthy of betting on...

So, as with so much poverty-informed work, it isn't particularly complicated, it is just hard. Our choice about supporting people "just-in-time" is as much about changing our mindsets, as it is about figuring out how to deliver the help. Instead of helping as many people as we can with the resources we have, we use a scarcity model to hoard resources and develop systems to decide who deserves help and who doesn't. That is corrosive and toxic in my opinion. At my last college we removed all criteria from an emergency fund for GED testing. We simply said if a staff member heard you needed help, you got it. The usage of the fund went up 500%. It strained the resources, but so what? We pursued more resources because we discovered our "criteria" were keeping people from asking. If you have similar systems, you need to ask yourself the big questions. Are you trying to help, or are you trying to pick winners and losers? Do you believe needing help is a normal part of life or do you see it as a sign of weakness and a character flaw? My point of view is obvious on this one, and even if you aren't entirely sold, think about all the energy and effort wasted to sort out who gets help and who doesn't. What if we just trusted the people we serve and redirected the time we gain to making things better. That is how we treat an emergency.