Class Questions

Class Questions: "THE SHEPHERD PROGRAM for the Interdisciplinary Study of Poverty and Human Capability is that rare kind of thing that can change your life. It is, its founders say, the only program of its kind in any undergraduate institution in the country. Any student in any major can sign up, but to earn the program's certificate, one must do not only the academic work -- reading liberal and conservative thinkers on theories of poverty and attending lectures on what it is to be poor -- but also complete a rigorous eight-week summer internship. Side by side with undergrads from Berea College, a largely low-income school in Kentucky, and from the historic black colleges of Morehouse and Spelman in Atlanta, they work, live with and live like the poorest of the poor, subsisting on $10 or less a day and bunking at institutions like the District's N Street Village women's shelter."

That the program is based at Washington and Lee University, a school for the elite and the privileged since 1749, is somewhat ironic. This is a school that, in some media and college rankings, turns out among the most CEOs, corporate presidents and political leaders per capita of any university in the nation -- about one-third of all graduates in a given year are from its Williams School of Commerce, Economics and Politics. W & L students are overwhelmingly white, largely from families who can easily pay the $27,960 annual tuition. Its reputation is Southern and conservative: It was one of the last all-male schools to admit women, in 1985, and this spring men from one fraternity were proudly sporting T-shirts with lines from a Hank Williams Jr. song: "If the South woulda won, we woulda had it made."

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He wanted to hear Ehrenreich's views on Sen's progressive theory. "The lack of money is not the only thing that makes people poor. There are questions of human capability," he said. "What are some things we should look at, like functional literacy, to measure poverty?"

"Stop thinking of it as something wrong with the person or there's something wrong with the choices they made," Ehrenreich snapped. "You have no idea how easily people can get derailed. I know that undermines the nice Protestant work ethic virtues if you can be blown off course so easily."

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One day, Ingrid was helping the trainees practice for job interviews. Some were so filled with self-doubt and gripped by fear that they simply froze up. That night, Ingrid wrote in her journal that, "I like to pretend that I am being selfless and kindhearted by being here and 'working so others can have a better life.' I am learning how blessed I am and how ridiculous it is to think anything I am doing is all that special . . . I have had people telling me since I was born that I would be successful. What is hard is growing up with only negative influences, voices and feedback and finding confidence in yourself."

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As she wrestles with her future, trying to be a good daughter and wanting to lead a purposeful life, she's been thinking lately of a poster she saw during her summer internship and noted in her journal. Perhaps it will guide her choices. "Don't try to save the world," it said, "but do what makes you come alive."