After five intense days at the Bonner Summer Leadership Institute, I am back from Berea!
The conference was fascinating, invigorating, disappointing, and interesting. Yes, all of that. The conference was a convergence of students and administrative staff from schools throughout the Bonner Network. For some background, the Bonner Program provides students committed to service with scholarships. This program looks different at each school, but at Macalester, it means 16 students per class year with high financial need earn their work study award at a site doing civic engagement. Some more info on the Bonner Program in general: http://www.bonner.org/
Schools from all over the country are a part of the Bonner Network, but especially schools from the South. I connected most with students from Morehouse College in Atlanta and Oberlin College in Ohio, but there were students from Kansas, Kentucky, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Virginia and one person repping Berkeley, CA! Two Bonner Congress reps (class of 2013) and myself joined the two Bonner Program coordinators for the conference.
The convergence consisted of elective workshops on a variety of topics. I attended a workshop on Tools for Social Justice, which, while it was interesting, reminded me of how advanced Macalester's work in the field truly is. I had a hard time connecting to some of the staff and students in the workshop, but I felt reaffirmed in my values. For example, the term "diversity" kept being used by participants. "My school beats diversity over the head," "Our school has a hard time with diversity," "My students don't want to talk about diversity," etc. Many of these comments were difficult to hear as they seemed closed to acknowledging and celebrating a multiplicity of backgrounds, histories and perspectives, but also because I could not tell what diversity meant. It appeared to me that people were referring to racial diversity, but the term could and should also include a diversity of many other identities and opinions. I spoke up, reminding the group that diversity is a very contextual word, meaning different things to different people, and asking for a clarification on what each person speaking meant when deploying that word. I also attended workshops on Public Policy work and how to write an issue brief, on a non-profit called Music Mobile out of Albany (It was amazing! http://www.musicmobile.org/), on perspectives regarding grad school, how to make meetings more interesting (yes, a meeting ABOUT meetings!), how an issue-based approach to civic engagement differs from a site-based approach and more. One of my disappointments came from the lack of programming regarding LGBTQ issues. There must have been over 100 elective workshop sessions, and it would been legitimizing (both personally, as an LGBTQ-identified woman, and politically) to have a space to discuss LGBTQ activism or any related theme. But people volunteered to lead workshops, and if nobody wanted to facilitate that topic, it means I should lead one at Bonner Congress in the fall! The conference also provided a special track for Senior Interns, which was an important time for me to learn about my responsibilities next year. I was able to brainstorm with other Senior Interns-to be about programming and recruitment. There were also various social events, from contra dancing to a drumming circle and an 80s-themed dance.
I met some intelligent, passionate and impressive students from all over the nation. I also had meaningful conversations with Bonner alums, the president of the foundation, and some incredibly open and insightful staff people from Oberlin College and Carson Newman College.
I also really enjoyed Berea College. The school was the first coed and desegregated school in the South. It also has an incredible program where all students work 10-15 hours a week in work-study, which pays for their entire tuition. Super super amazing. I went into a craft shop, where Berea students make pottery, weave scarves, make brooms, and more. As I purchased a wooden tic-tac-toe game, I met Dennis, a student from rural Kentucky, who told me that he did not grow up with running water and that he would not have been able to attend college had it not been for Berea's program. He also learned the skill of jewelry making and liked it so much that he hopes to make jewelry professionally and sell it in galleries. Dennis's story made me so happy, but it also made me wonder if he would have ever been able to go to a place like Macalester. Even though Macalester offers a lot of financial aid, it is still a prohibitively expensive school.
After this experience, I am still wrestling with important issues of social justice, privilege and positionality when doing service work, and the importance of asking questions. The conference was more (Christian) religious in its undertones and overtones than I was expecting, which made me feel a bit uneasy, but I tried to seek the messages of commitment and love that came from this faith-based approach. I hope to keep in touch with those I met at the conference and I am excited to be a part of the Bonner network.
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