Reflection
During winter quarter, Grethe Peterson, a member of the Bennion Center Advisory Board, reported her reaction to KUED’s documentary on the plight of the homeless in Salt Lake City. The student members of the board were intrigued by the discussion that ensued and thought the Bennion Center could get involved by creating a “Campaign for the Homeless” on campus. I agreed to be the campaign director. As I read the name now, I think I would select a less noblesse oblige-sounding name. Rather than doing something for someone else, we primarily provided help for people to help themselves. The name also implies that the homeless are powerless and need things done for them. As I learned more, my perception of the homeless changed considerably.
I hit the ground running the following autumn because I was able to attend a Salt Lake City conference on homelessness. I met many more people devoting their time to the problem. I also learned about an attempt in New York City to craft a legal right to shelter from broad phrases in the New York State Constitution. I was stunned by this “radical” idea. However, it seemed like an elegant solution to the problem: just make being homeless illegal and require society to provide some minimum level of subsistence for anyone who needs it. As with all seemingly simple solutions to complex problems, the difficulty was in the execution. How minimum a level of subsistence? How can this legal right be enforced? Ultimately, I turned my interest in these questions into my senior honors thesis. This linkage of my community service work with my academic work foreshadowed the development of the Service-Learning Scholars Program created in 1992 and the establishment of Bennion professorships to create courses linking hands-on service in the community with a course of study. My work on this paper also confirmed my interest in studying law.
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