The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Yale program connects to city
Dwight Hall students seek to meet needs
NEW HAVEN » The group of middle schoolers were gathered in a room just off the squash courts in Yale University’s Payne Whitney Gymnasium, but they had a more weighty topic on their minds than whacking a ball with a racquet.
They were taking part in the Teaching Peace Initiative, made possible by the summer fellowships sponsored by Dwight Hall, the student-run service and social justice center at Yale.
The summer session of the Teaching Peace Initiative — during the academic year, the program connects with high schoolers across the country — is being coordinated by Sheila Qasemi of Denver, who will be a junior in the fall and studies biology.
“Peace to me means that people accepted are for who they are and not alienated because of who they are, what they look like or how they act,” read Miniya from her homework. “This is important to me because a lot of people I know,
Connecting
including me, are not accepted into society.”
Qasemi said the specific focus on the course, which lasts a month, is on bullying and intolerance.
“If we want to solve the epidemic of bullying in schools … then we need to address the root causes and those root causes include prejudice, intolerance, stereotypes and ignorance,” Qasemi said.
Qasemi urged the students to include details about their background and experiences in their definitions of peace. “I’m asking you to be vulnerable and talk about your life, so be sure you’re being honest about your background,” she said.
Some students shared that they felt like they were treated differently because their family came to the United States from Guatemala or Mexico, or from poor or broken families.
“When I ask you for your background and I ask you for your connection [with] peace, make sure they’re connected,” Qasemi said.
“We want them to connect them to their life because then it’s more meaningful to them and they’ll remember it,” she said. “The second objective is to help them understand the definitions of prejudice, of stereotypes, of ignorance, and understand the relationship between these concepts.”
Qasemi said she has a personal reason for participating in the Teaching Peace Initiative.
“I’m a practicing Muslim and there’s a lot of prejudice around Muslims in this country … a lot of stereotyping of who they are,” she said.
After the class, the group went on to the courts. The summer fellowship partners with Squash Haven, which combines the fun of playing squash with academics for city youths.
Doing more
Peter Crumlish, executive director of Dwight Hall, said the summer fellowships began in 1968.
“Dwight Hall basically did an experiment to rethink the way Yale students were doing service to New Haven. Prior to that, the traditional kind of approach was through charity: ‘We have more so we should do more.’”
Now, he said, the attitude is, “We’re coming to you for you to tell us what you need us to do and we’ll roll up our sleeves and do it.”
About a dozen students each summer are “placed in nonprofit organizations, city agencies and community organizations to spend the summer working on a project” that the organizations “couldn’t really tackle on their own without additional resources,” he said.
The summer fellowships are affiliated with Dwight Hall’s urban fellows, who do similar work during the academic year in high schools, Crumlish said. Summer fellows are also working with the Yale Prison Education Initiative, the city Engineering Department and Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services.
Arabelle Schoenberg of Berkeley, California, who will be a junior in the fall, said her placement with the New Haven Land Trust fits well with her environmental studies major.
“Basically, my job this summer is doing a lot of outreach and educational events,” organizing bird walks and insect walks, as well as bringing in academics from local universities who want to do research in one of the land trust’s six nature preserves in New Haven.
Another part of her job is community engagement, having people come in to remove invasive species and replace them with native plantings. “When we do these educational events we want to get people who would not be engaging in those natural spaces,” Schoenberg said.
Finally, Schoenberg is “the steward for the preserves,” keeping trails clear and undertaking similar tasks. She said she appreciates “having the ability to live here and support myself and make the city something different from the university.”
“I just sort of feel like during the school year we’re working really hard and it’s really easy to stay within that insular world.”
Her fellowship is “completely changing the way I see New Haven and after graduating I’m thinking more about staying here,” Schoenberg said.
Lorna Chitty, a rising sophomore from Valdosta, Georgia, who is studying political science, is interning at the Connecticut Veterans Legal Center, focusing on maintaining the center’s database of pro bono attorneys.
“I’ve sat in on intakes at the Errera Community [Care] Center and at the new site where we might be working at, which is the VA headquarters at Rocky Hill,” Chitty said.
“I thought it was a very dynamic space,” she said of the Errera Center in West Haven. “It was bustling and noisy and I was very struck by the network of social workers.”
“We have a very small development staff,” said Cara Cancelmo, the legal center’s development and communications director. “It’s great to get somebody with fresh ideas.”
Cancelmo said the seven attorneys on staff and those volunteering their services work with 650 veterans a year on a variety of cases.
“Some of the big ones are housing cases, disability compensation, military records correction, which is commonly known as discharge upgrades,” Cancelmo said.
They’ll also help veterans with their taxes, Social Security, modifying child support and student loan debt, she said.
Compared with the classroom, Chitty said, her internship is “teaching me a great deal about this very fascinating intersection of politics, human rights and the … administrative work of a nonprofit. How these actually become … realized in the real world and how they impact people’s lives.”
There’s also been some fun involved. The veterans legal center is in a video competition for a $20,000 grant from the Liberty Bank Foundation.
“There were puppies involved and a dog wrangler,” Chitty said. She’s been helping promote it through social media and emails to donors and supporters.
“We’re very grateful to Dwight Hall,” Cancelmo said. “It’s a great program. … It’s a really lovely way for a nonprofit to be connected to Yale.”