A New Style for Student Social Action

( The author is a member of Education for Action )

WHEN EDUCATION for Action (E4A) began in 1966, few people questioned the ways that students were working for social change. Coming into existence in the middle of a great liberal/Peace Corps/Vista era, it was easy to be optimistic about the possibilities of a program like E4A.

The early emphasis of the program was on running seminars and workshops on "relevant social issues." The hope and belief was that by making education more relevant to social, political and economic issues students could be prepared to deal with the problems. Many students felt the need to balance academic work with practical experience in social action outside of the university community. Grants enabled students to do meaningful and interesting work for organizations or citizens' groups which did not have the resources to pay salaries.

That age of starry-eyed optimism about the changes that students could effect inevitably came to an end. E4A, like many other organizations, began to question the paternalistic and elitist ways in which students had engaged in social service. Too often, students set up their own projects with little or no appreciation or regard for the community that they had entered. A need grew for a greater sensitivity concerning the way that students got involved, their functions and their roles.

Students who had experience with summer or term-time social action experienced a lot of discouragement. Few people felt that they had been able to accomplish anything in a short period. The immensity of the struggle and the realization that one individual could have very little impact was disheartening.

LAST SUMMER, E4A funded three Radcliffe students to work with mothers in Chelsea to set up a day care center. One of the students' project reports expressed the frustrations of struggling for social change. "Chelsea helped me to feel who I am, gave me confidence, made me angry, drew me close to people, caused me to hate, gave me energy, radicalized me, taught me independence, helped me to decide to leave school, and ultimately sent me on a 3000-mile flight from the despair and discouragement of being involved in struggle with poor Chelsea women. For a year I tried to argue, pressure, cajole, encourage them out of their defeatism; at the end of the year I joined them in it...

"How is it that women can work so long (some started before I appeared and continued after I left) for something they obviously need and have a right to such as a day care center;... how is it that women who go to the Federal 4 C day care program end up fighting to stay out of the clutches of a program that has no money, that wishes only to use them for experimentation... how is it that women who look to their local community action program for help in their war on poverty again find only a show with no possibility of day care money that wants to engulf every people's struggle-not in order to succeed but to carry on the show and thus the director's salary... how a group of women who could work so long and hard to become day care experts without a center could find a last resort in a combination of Welfare and United Fund money called Associated Day Car Services, and how ADCS, at the very end, could come to us with The Law-a conglomeration of atrociously unjust and inequal salary and vacation scales, high fees for the children, and almost complete loss of any power, any control by the mothers save in advisory capacity....

"How silly, how naive, after learning not to trust every other organization that offered help, that we should finally trust this, our last hope, in its promises that because the Chelsea group was their first grassroots experience they would certainly have to make way for more flexibility in the area of community control. And yet it was our last hope. We could wait neither for 4 C's nor the Revolution."

E4A is trying to respond to this discouragement by building a loose network of people engaged in various aspects of social change, a center through which people can share experiences, knowledge, and information. An information clearinghouse keeps an up-to-date listing of movement activities and community projects and programs across the country. The people who use the information clearinghouse to find jobs and ways of getting involved in social action return with new information and contribute to the E4A information resources. The information clearinghouse-while it is far from being complete and perfectly organized-does seem to fill a need that students are increasingly feeling, that of help-ing to find ways to subsist while they are engaged in social action. While unable to keep running tabs on specific job openings, E4A does have a fairly extensive file on organizations where there are often volunteer or paying job possibilities. The responsibility for making contacts belongs to the student. Often meeting and talking with people who are working in the field of interest is very valuable: The process can expand a person's sense of the available options for social involvement; it can bring a person to the point where he or she can start thinking about creating organizations and thus jobs.

HELPING people find jobs-whether it be for the summer of for a term off or for after graduation-reflects another criticism of the type of work that students have done in the past. In general, student efforts to bring about social change, be they individual's efforts or more collective efforts, are very short-lived. (Witness the strikes of the last two years.) Organizations die and enthusiasm dwindles long before one could realistically expect results. E4A hopes to help people deal with the immense problem of evolving a viable lifestyle from their political and social commitments by bringing together people who are building their lifestyles. Our hope is that by working together, by sharing ideas and information, people will become more effective over a long period of time.

The problem with the Harvard-Radcliffe community is often the lack of communication with people who have had interesting and productive experiences. How do you find out what is going on? How does one make contacts with people to work with, people to live with while you struggle together? What can you do to share information that you have? E4A attempts to offer answers.

THIS is a self-critical time for E4A. The Student Board members are questioning E4A's role as it exists now and as it may evolve in the future. The Harvard-Radcliffe "non-merger" may mean the loss of some financial support. In the past, administrative costs have been covered by Radcliffe and the Student Board has been responsible for fund-raising activities to get the money used for grants.

The "non-merger" has precipitated a lot of soul searching. What other needs could E4A be filling? Which functions have perhaps outlived their usefulness? How could we do what we do better? Some of the things that will be emphasized are the information clearinghouse and job counseling, funding only full-time projects when a student takes a leave of absence, or perhaps organizing E4A projects and funding students to work on them.

For this year at least, E4A will be funding students to work on social action projects over the summer. Grants for the summer normally cover subsistence plus required earnings for students with financial need and/or project expenses. Some people thing of E4A as a sort of a "mini-foundation." Ideally, however, the E4A money can be shared by everyone who is struggling and people will think of the money as only one of the resources of the E4A community.