Celebrating Engagement

Each April my office sponsors an evening of awards, recognition and fun.  We call it Celebration of Service.  On this evening we recognize and give our most sincere gratitude to William and Mary’s student volunteers. The students who have dedicated countless hours to working with members of our community in a wide variety of volunteer efforts are deserving of our deepest thanks and praise. In taking time to reflect upon the efforts of our community we strengthen our rich culture of engagement.  An important component of Celebration of Service is the student speaker. This year Allison Anoll, a senior, double majoring in American Studies and Government was the selected speaker.   Allison a program assistant and teaching fellow for the Sharpe Community Scholars Program, works as a Community Service Leader for the Office of Volunteer Services and is a tour guide for the College.   Allison plans to continue her research on civics education and engagement after graduation by pursuing a Ph.D. in Political Science.  She hopes to use this research to inform policy decisions in the future dealing with civic education and trends of civic disengagement.   Her speech was moving, engaging and thought-provoking and with her permission the text follows:

Hey Friends,

I’ve wanted to give this speech for a long time-mostly because I know the people who make up this audience are the ones I respect the most in this entire school.

All of you are here tonight because you have something in common.  Deep inside your hearts and minds, you feel that something is wrong.  You feel that the world around you is askew, that things are not as they should be, and that you have a responsibility to fix them.

You feel this because species extinction is 1,000 times its normal rate, because Wal-Mart has a higher GDP that 80% of the countries in the world, and because every 53 seconds in America, another child dies from poverty.

You’re here tonight because women are still paid eighty cents on the dollar as compared to men, because last year 11 million children under the age of five died from preventable diseases, because genocide still happens around the world.

You are here tonight because these are not just statistics to you-Rather, they’re truths that burn inside of you, that ache and fester and every day, in and out, you think about how to change them.

But if you feel these things, you also know this:  The path to change is not easy. Community engagement, service and activism are never simple.  We have all felt hopeless and overwhelmed by the power structures, the red tape and inequalities, which have left us asking ourselves-

In the face of a world that never seems to change, how do we remain idealistic?

The answer is I believe, we must think outside ourselves and outside our lifetime.  Explaining evolution, Darwin once said that people had a hard time understanding it because they were incapable of thinking historically.  Change, he suggested, happens slowly-so slowly that it is often difficult to see in our lifetimes.  Social change is the same way; to remain idealistic, to imagine the fulfillment of our paradigm, we must think historically to see the world moving.

Further, Darwin suggested that change happens with individuals, that single mutations occur and with enough time, spread to the population.

Tonight, we are here to celebrate a group of mutations in our population, students who exhibit a tremendous and ongoing commitment to service, engagement and social-justice.  Only a few have been able to come on stage tonight, but everyone here has a hand in the paradigm shift that pushes us closer to a new tomorrow.  Tonight, I would like to show you the mutations that have already occurred in our population.

If in your time at William and Mary, you’ve given up part of your weekend, holiday, or spring break to attend a service trip, please stand now.

If you’ve worked in a food bank, tutored students or painted a house for a stranger, please stand now.

If you’ve ever been a Sharpie, please stand now.

If you’re a vegetarian for moral reasons, please stand now.

If you turn off the lights before you leave a room or recycle your plastics, please stand now.

If you treat your male and female friends the same, please stand now.

If you always look your cashier or waitress in the eye because you know they’re a person and you’re a person and at the end of the day, your suffering and joys are the same, please stand now.

If you’ve stood at any point before this, please stand now.  Look around you.  This is change.  This is the world becoming what you wish it to be.  Remember this.  When things are harder than they should be, when you’re entrenched in red tape, when you’re tired and alone and nothing seems to be moving, remember this.

Change is undoubtedly slow, but it is my fierce belief that history moves in spirals, not circles.  Three hundred of you stand here now to show that spiral moving forward and next year, another 300 will fill these seats.

My friends, we are getting closer every day.

This is William and Mary!