Antiochian - Winter 2002

			The Alumni Newsletter of Antioch College Winter 2002

Antioch College Home Antiochian Home Winter '02 Site Map Top Stories University News Campus News Alumni News Book Notes Class Notes Obituaries

Exploring Service Options at Antioch

Building Down Barriers

New President Joan Straumanis Seeks to Strengthen and Stabilize

The Antiochian is published by the Office of Development and Alumni Relations. Articles submitted for publication should be addressed to the Antiochian Editor, Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio 45387-1697. Or send via email: alumni@antioch-college.edu

Editor:
Rachel Moulton '97

Contributing Writers:
Laurien Alexandre
Derek Ali
Patricia Corrigan
Masha J. Etkin '63
Lauren Heaton
Dan Kaplan '76
Fred Kraus
Mary Laskowski '02
Meredith Moss
Rachel Moulton '97
Robyn Overstreet '96
Anne Townsend '03

Photography:
Dennie Eagleson '71
Lauren Heaton

Building Down Barriers

By Lauren Heaton

Community Responsibility Scholar and philosophy major, Kelly Connolly '03

There are very few situations in life where one could, in the span of three years, get paid to build homes in South Africa, investigate for the Palauan public defender, do organic gardening in the South of France and teach stilt-walking to the local school kids. But being at once a Bonner Scholar, Community Responsibility Scholar (CRS) and co-op student at Antioch is one of those situations. Fourth-year student Kelly Connolly managed to do it all in her first three years at Antioch, and finally this year she's bringing all the skills learned abroad to contribute to the local service effort.

The Greene County chapter of Habitat for Humanity, a global organization that builds affordable homes, snapped her up the moment her shoes -- still red with the dirt of Durban, South Africa -- hit their native soil. She spent the summer on co-op in Durban working as a Bonner Scholar for Habitat and trying to pronounce rudimentary Xhosa. Now her global positioning is different, but the issue is the same, from Durban to Xenia, Ohio: the very basic right to affordable housing. Connolly has not lost sight of that. "I don't like getting bogged down by organizational details, I just like to plunge in and get down to work," she said. "These are great homes we're building that people can be proud to live in and pass on to their children."

On Wednesdays and Saturdays, for a total of eight to ten Bonner Scholarship hours a week, Connolly pounds nails and follows construction technique taught by other volunteers at the Habitat site. She is working with civilians and students from other campuses alongside the future homeowner and other Habitat homeowners. They are finishing one home and the homeowner should be set to move in soon. The group has already started a second house next door, and the third one is scheduled for completion in time for Antioch's graduation next spring.

Connolly, originally from the Chicago area, finds she has more in common than she would have guessed with the people she works with. They have all come together as professionals, students and volunteers to collaborate in order to achieve a common goal. The same was true in South Africa, where poverty was rampant and the housing situation was even more dire.

"I felt we were working together in the community toward building something better, and for me that helped stave off the sense of hopelessness people had across the races there," Connolly said.

The previous year, Connolly spent her Bonner co-op term under the auspices of the public defender of Palau investigating possible human rights violations. Operating in a developing country with governance systems only loosely in place, Connolly found it was difficult to make effective change and that her expectations for accountability were unrealistic. But spending time with Palauans gave her insight about their collective decision --making culture. And she witnessed first hand the devastation continual conquest can wreak on a people and their culture. This time she felt she learned more than she contributed.

Community Responsibility Scholar Kelly Connolly at work for Habitat for Humanity

"Service and the classroom do complement each other, but service gives you the [challenge of] tangible problem solving and diplomacy, especially across cultures and languages, that the classroom cannot give you," Connolly said.

Community service began shaping her life while she was home schooling her last few years of high school and volunteering in a theater program for underprivileged youth in Evanston. Through her continued commitment to service and reflection, Connolly is now realizing that the young women in the Drama Girls program could have benefited a lot more from social services counseling that went beyond the arts. Her other service experiences at Antioch have brought her once peripheral understanding of the issues into focus. She now sees the reasons she was volunteering much more clearly, and she has gained some of the tools that will allow her to do it more effectively. Whatever the future holds, it will involve active participation in the community.

"If I didn't have the scholarships, I would not have been so involved in service," Connolly said. "But I've been indoctrinated; if I'm not devoting a really good chunk of my time to service in the future, it will mean that something went drastically wrong. I can't not do service now."