Service: A Vital Part of Learning
Students end winter break on the streets of Seattle...
Issues of social justice and the plight of the poor and disadvantaged are not unfamiliar topics for many students at Whitman College.
From answering phones at Walla Walla's Helpline to running an entire program at the YMCA, hundreds of Whitman students volunteer with various local service agencies each year, working through the campus Center for Community Service.
In mid-January, however, several students visited the streets of Seattle, Washington, as well, to view first-hand the myriad of problems that plague America's much larger cities.
"Many of our students work with the homeless and disadvantaged in the Walla Walla area, but the scale is so much greater in places like Seattle," said Craig Collisson, director of Whitman's Community Service Center. "The issues and problems in the larger cities tend to hit you over the head a little more."
Collisson, '96, and nine students spent three days at such sites as the Lutheran Compass Center and First Avenue Service Center. They did chores as volunteers with a non-denominational AIDS project and sorted clothing and helped prepare and serve meals at several homeless shelters.
...and work as Red Cross helpers in Mexico
After laboring through a semester of classes at an academically demanding private college, Jessica Cole and her friends headed for the sun and warmth of Mexico.
Sounds like a well-deserved and relaxing holiday getaway, right? Not exactly. Cole, a Whitman College junior, and her collegiate buddies set their sights on something other than the bars of Baja or the beaches of Acupulco. They served instead as Red Cross volunteers in the west central highlands of Mexico, in and around the city of Guanajuato.
Arriving in Guanajuato on December 27, the Whitman contingent spent the next two weeks visiting small, neighboring villages with a traveling Red Cross medical team.
"Many of us have certain talents and skills, but we helped in whatever ways we were needed," Cole said. Cole is a certified lifeguard trainer, so her knowledge of CPR and first aid was relevant to a region where drownings in water reservoirs are not uncommon. Two other students are biology majors who lent their expertise to ongoing health and environmental education efforts.
"Each of us has a strong interest in the people and culture of Latin America," Cole said. Members of the group, who lived in Whitman's La Casa Hispana during the fall semester, worked odd jobs to raise money for airfare.
