Clara Jane Hendrickson | Another award, few winners

Leftovers | President's Engagement Prize falls short

By Clara Jane Hendrickson 06/03/15 10:23pm

The first winners of Amy Gutmann’s President’s Engagement Prize that awards its recipients with $100,000 to fund a “promising engagement project” at the local, national or global level the year after graduation were announced in March.

Such a prize obscures whose participation is needed most, for example, at the local level of engagement. According to a report recently released by Shared Prosperity Philadelphia, whose information is used by the mayor’s office to assess the effects of poverty, and the Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia is the poorest big city in America with nearly 30 percent of its residents living below the poverty line and 12 percent living in deep poverty. In an era of post-industrialization, non-union service jobs are the norm and Philadelphia’s economy has become marked by increased privatization through widespread subcontracting. Working parents take on multiple, part-time jobs and receive few benefits while their children’s public schools are closing and grossly underfunded. Developers have built new apartment complexes to support the influx of young professionals, raising property taxes, while vacant lots that could be perfect locations for community gardens and farms sit empty in food deserts. Large nonprofits such as universities — including ours — and hospitals are some of the largest employers in the city and boast about their community projects and partnerships, yet fail to commit to paying the city for lost property taxes.

There is something missing from progressive social movements, city government and neighborhood-level decision making, and it is not Ivy League graduates. It is the participation of the communities we hope to “serve” on the frontline of the social issues that affect them the most.

Responding to injustice in Philadelphia, injustice that is inherently racial and economic by nature of this city, will require more than one-year ventures funded by Penn. Efforts must be creative, multidimensional, build strong coalitions and prioritize working-class community leadership. Penn students should take the examples of recent successful campaigns and organizations, such as the lobbying efforts of Philadelphians Organized to Witness, Empower and Rebuild (POWER), that resulted in securing an increased minimum wage for city contracts and subcontractors, or the new paid sick leave policy that was recently mandated.

Created with the innocuous intention of establishing motivation and the financial support for Penn students to take on large social engagement projects, Amy Gutmann hoped the prize would maximize Penn student involvement. However, what the prize does is laud the few select and exceptional recipients of a prestigious award that is on par with the benefits of working a high-paying corporate job the year after graduation — especially since the award also comes with an exorbitant $50,000 to fund one individual’s living expenses for a year. What this award does not do is create a cultural norm at Penn that its students can and should have the opportunities and innate motivation to take on such social engagement work in all capacities, not just as the creators of new projects.

President Gutmann believed the prize would present an opportunity to translate knowledge gained at Penn into practice. However, this depiction of Penn graduates presumes that the translation of such knowledge into accepted community practice or public policy in the world — especially by someone who has most likely never had to live under the consequences of such social problems — is just as easy as becoming an expert in a particular social problem under the auspices of an Ivy League institution.

The sign of the award’s success will not be found in the longevity or efficacy of the projects it first funds. It will be found in whether the thousands of Penn undergraduates who want to do good after graduation but will not win — or even consider applying for such an award — will be institutionally and culturally supported by Penn.

While the effort of the award recipients to begin a new social engagement initiative requires tremendous creativity, the willingness of Penn students to forfeit prestige and financial security to perform the important and fundamental work of listening to communities the year after they graduate, rather than beginning projects with community relationships that are half-baked, is certainly its own reward.

CLARA JANE HENDRICKSON is a rising College senior from San Francisco studying political science. Her email address is clara@sas.upenn.edu.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.