Two Truths and a Lie

For my first column, we'll play two rounds of an ice-breaker called "Two truths and a lie." Spot the lie from the following to win: a) I am a citizen of no country whatsoever; b) I have a blood brother; c) I almost became a runway model. The answer appears at the bottom.

See how you do on the second one: a) Harvard students care about the poor; b) Harvard students who do public service care; c) Harvard students do not care about the poor.

If you think the lie in this second question is either a) or c) because they directly contradict, think again. It's actually b).

Look at the facts. Upon graduation, over two-thirds of seniors have participated in public service. PBHA draws 1,700 students annually to serve over 12,000 community members. Harvard does better than the rest of America: Of the 93 million volunteers nationwide, most do what pastor Eugene F. Rivers III scorns as "recreational community service"--baking cookies for girl scouts or baby-sitting for a neighbor. Only eight percent work in "human services" --in soup kitchens, shelters, camps and inner-city schools. Virtually all Harvard students fall into this latter category of real community service. Harvard students certainly care for and about the poor.

And then there are the homeless in the Square. We rarely give money. We hate it when they open the door to CVS for us, because we'll feel obligated to give on the way out. "She tells you to have a nice day to make you feel guilty." "He was wearing a Nautica jacket and begging for change. What's up with that?" "He smells." "She's fat." I have heard worse, often from the very same students who rave about their public service programs. In those moments, I know Harvard students do not care about the poor.

For cynics, this Jekyll-and-Hyde complex regarding the homeless isn't puzzling at all: Harvard students, they argue, are two-faced, selfish and career-driven. They join public service programs only to boost their resumes and then show their true colors when dealing with the poor in the Square.

This explanation is false. It is false because it fails to account for the immense investment of emotion and time which students put into their community service programs. Thus, it is still unclear why Harvard students who are so generous in their programs are also so close-fisted outside of them. How can they both care about and not care about the poor at the same time?

The key to this paradox is a four-letter word: kids. Public service at Harvard revolves around children.

Not to deny that kids are needy, but the emphasis on children is surprising because the needs of adults--prisoners, homeless, single mothers, illiterates, drug addicts--by far outweigh that of youngsters. Yet of the over 70 programs at PBHA, a vast majority serve kids. Of its 16 summer programs, only two--the shelter and a teaching program--help adults.

Other community service programs are no different: City Step, HAND, America Reads and Peace Games all cater to children under high-school age. Nor is this focus on children confined to Harvard alone: Dwight Hall at Yale and the Swearer Center at Brown show a similar bias. Almost every web page, every pamphlet on community service at Harvard and beyond shows counselors surrounded by mostly minority children hugging, laughing and frolicking.

Why is this relevant? Children share what author Jonathan Kozol refers to as the "equality of innocence." We know kids are not responsible for their situation because their youth exempts them from personal responsibility. Explanations we give for their poverty sound very common-sensical as a result: They are homeless because there is no affordable housing in Boston. They are poor because there are no jobs for their parents. They fail school because they do not speak English.

Adults, on the other hand, have agency, and so they are poor because they are lazy. Because adults are not so obviously innocent and we assume they have the power to overcome their problems, we despise them for "choosing" to stay poor. We dislike them because they are dirty, not recognizing that Au Bon Pain will not let them use the bathroom. But if they are well groomed, we dislike them too, because they obviously could get a job if they wanted to. Thus, for adults, we often inflate the extent to which they can use their individual agency to overcome structural social barriers. Kids are much easier.

In Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamozov, Ivan tells his brother that he loves his neighbor, but only from a distance. "For anyone to love a man, he must be hidden, for as soon as he shows his face, love is gone... Beggars should never show themselves, but ask for charity through the newspapers... Children can be loved even at close quarters, even when they are dirty, even when they are ugly."

My point is not to deny that kids are needy. Rather, the preference of Harvard students involved in public service to serve kids betrays the extent to which they are still tainted by the same blame-the-victim mentality they sometimes like to accuse others of harboring. Alexander T. Nguyen '99 is a social studies concentrator in Pforzheimer House. The answer to the first question is a), which only used to be true. His column will appear on alternate Mondays.