Students participating in Intersections are gathered here at Tacoma Community House. Intersections gives this community an opportunity to learn in-depth about spirituality & social justice and immigration & incarceration issues.
Campus Connection:
Intersections: Immigration and Incarceration | By Dave Wright
A distinctive feature of our connectional ministry at the University of Puget Sound is that it is embedded within the structures of the college itself. While that can cause some challenges at times, it also opens the door to remarkable possibilities. This month, as a report from the field of our various ministries in higher education, I’d like to share an exciting new development that is possible specifically because of our location within the College. Beginning next Fall, we will offer an on-campus community, Intersections, focused on exploring two sets of intersections: the weaving together of spirituality and social justice, and the connections between immigration and incarceration.
The first intersection: spirituality and social justice.
Many of us, students and faculty included, wrestle with systems of meaning, with evolving patterns of belief and practice, and with integrating personal values with the explosion of critical thinking that is at the core of a liberal arts education. These conversations about meaning intertwine with questions of both personal identities (particularly race, gender, sexual identity, ability, religion, and socioeconomic background) and social justice (exploring and addressing structural and incidental inequity in society) have come to live at the core of our chaplaincy at Puget Sound. Intersections will give students the chance to do so not only in the classroom, but in their living community and through structured engagement with faculty, staff, and community leaders – off-campus and on-campus.
The second intersection: immigration and incarceration.
A group of local faculty has been working for several years to develop educational opportunities at the Western Washington Women’s Prison, and recently organized into The Freedom Education Project of Puget Sound (www.fepps.org). Over the last two years, members of FEPPS have worked with my staff members and I to engage student groups in issues of injustice in incarceration in America, leading to everything from internship opportunities to our recently completed “Books for Prisoners” drive in partnership with Seattle’s Left Bank Books. In a parallel process, others have focused on immigration issues, particularly relating to the Northwest Detention Center, Tacoma Community House, and El Centro Latino. This intersection has already led to projects through our Alternative Break, panel conversations with participants in the Northwest Detention Center Roundtable (nwdcroundtable.org), and the exploration of ways to directly engage students in work with those detained (and their families) out on the tideflats of Tacoma.
These intersections are coming together to create a program that has helped place our students near the forefront of what is being termed “Civic Learning.” This emerging umbrella term attempts to embrace the wide range of (often disconnected) community service practices, curricular programs, research initiatives, and immersive education opportunities that are common in higher education. Puget Sound, as one of only 50 schools invited to be part of a pilot Civic Learning initiative called LEAD (www.naspa.org/clde/lead_initiative.cfm), is now part of an emerging emphasis on Civic Learning that will have rippling impacts on the current and next generations of college students – and through them, hopefully, on our society.
The work for social justice, especially when connected with both personal and collective systems of meaning and belief, is at the heart of what many of us in higher education do on a daily basis. It’s also at the heart of our denomination’s Social Principles, and, I believe, at the heart of the Gospel. As someone who was a product of Methodist-supported higher education, and who sees daily the ways in which our conference and denominational connections impact the lives and experiences of students of all beliefs, all backgrounds, all narratives, I’m grateful for the ways that we are together in this work. Know that – in this area, as in so many others – we are making a difference for the world.
Dave Wright serves as the University Chaplain and Director of Spirituality, Service & Social Justice for the University of Puget Sound.
This article will be featured in the upcoming January issue of Channels. Visit www.pnwumc.org/channels.
