Got Social Justice?

Once upon a time, I was a “prospie” taking a tour of Grinnell College. One term that was constantly mentioned by students and administrators was “social justice,” a phrase almost as popular as “self-gov.” The tour guides and administrators discussed multiple opportunities for getting involved in social justice, the Grinnell Prize, and Grinnell’s history as a socially just institution. All of this sounded great to me; Grinnell seemed like a college where people actually cared about what was happening in the world.

Fast forward to the present. During my first year at Grinnell, I’ve heard some students complain that Grinnellians talk more about social justice than they participate in it. Is this true? Do few people have time to volunteer between homework, Harris, and sleep? Or was there more participation than I realized?

Part of the problem stems from the lack of a real definition of social justice. For the purposes of this article, social justice is defined as an organized action that works to better the community or world. The most common forms of social justice are community service and working with an activist group, but protesting, creating a petition, and other concrete actions could also be included. However, simply supporting a cause verbally takes a lot less effort than these actions, and therefore is not counted as social justice. So, volunteering at an animal shelter would be an example of social justice, but simply stating that you support animal welfare without doing anything about it would not.

With this definition in mind, I interviewed a group of firstyear students about their opinions on social justice.

“I believe that it is a major part of more Grinnellians’ lives than students at the average college,” said Adam Arsenault ’16, “but that is not to say that every Grinnellian champions social justice.”

Another student, Rachael Andrew ’16, who participated in numerous social justice activities in high school, said that there are a lot of opportunities to participate in social justice, but less time to do so than in high school.

Student Maddie Howland ’16 said that she’s met many passionate people at Grinnell, and cites the Grinnell Prize as an example of tangible social justice at Grinnell.

Meanwhile, student Zafiro Hiliada ’16 stated, “There are many people who care here, but not many people do a lot of things,” and “activist organizations in college do not have a lot of members.”

All of the students I interviewed agreed that Grinnell students care about the world. However, some said that participation in social justice was lower than they thought it should be. Why is this? Like Andrew mentioned, time is definitely a large factor. During NSO, many first years plan on getting involved in social justice. They sign up for countless community service and activist groups at the activities fair, but when the school year gets underway and they’re buried behind papers, readings, and lab reports, they never go to any meetings. It’s not that they don’t care; there’s only so much time in the day.

A recent example of the scarcity of student involvement in social justice is the lack of participation in the dialogue about financial aid. According to the S&B, there are three different budget plans, each of which contains some measures that would disadvantage nonwealthy applicants, and therefore contradict social justice. However, when the administration held a public presentation detailing possible changes to financial aid policy only two students besides the SGA cabinet and S&B staff attended. Many students think these changes are anti-social justice (and some students would not be here if these changes had been implemented earlier), but few have actively engaged in the discussion. Also, though Grinnell touts it’s social justice prize quite a lot, student turnout at the events was low.

That’s not to say Grinnell students don’t participate in social justice. Many students are very involved with it. According to the 2008 National Survey of Student Engagement, 78.9 percent of seniors at Grinnell had done community service or have planned to do so. This number seems high, but it is only slightly above the national average of 74.1 percent. (The survey fails to distinguish between actual volunteers and planned volunteers. The number of actual, regular volunteers is probably much lower for both the Grinnell and national statistics.) Though this survey is a bit dated and flawed, it still raises an important question: While Grinnell is definitely committed to social justice, is it significantly more socially just than most colleges?

I found that Grinnell students have, overall, socially just attitudes, but we could participate in social justice much, much more. The amount of time we spend discussing social justice does not match up with actual student participation in social justice. Almost all students support causes verbally and pride their selves in being tolerant and socially aware, which is great, but we need to do more than just state how socially just we are. Volunteer, join a social justice group, get involved if you aren’t already. Though it sounds cliché, we really won’t have another time in our lives where we have this many opportunities to get involved with something we’re passionate about. Life is only going to get busier after college.