Poverty Informed Practice in Higher Education: The Power of Love

My parents were hippies. Hopefully the picture at the top of the article provides some evidence of this. That's me in the middle, and I suppose Mom and Dad are around 20 or 21 at that point. I am not 100% sure which house this was, but I suspect it was a farmhouse they rented in a place I call Folsom, which was sort of in the middle of nowhere, which I suspect was the point at the time ("back to the land" and all). Like I said, Mom and Dad were hippies, at least they were until they weren't. Mom is gone of course, but she ended up as a pretty successful non-profit executive and started multiple small businesses of her own along the way. I am grateful my dad is still here (the benefit of teen parents) and his career made him a bit of a local legend as a teacher and coach. However, that all happened later. I'm the oldest child, and for much of my formative years, I grew up around an interesting cast of characters and with a point of view steeped in those hippie values. Poverty was of course part of the picture as my Dad struggled to find a career, and my parents eventually divorced. But the positives were, I knew people a little boy from nowhere probably does not get to normally. There were amateur musicians, immigrants, a former priest, and nun, and just a collection of interesting folks. No one had very much, but there was a generosity to all of them, and at least from a little boy's perspective, it felt like people who genuinely cared for one another and looked to help one another. I was a little boy growing up in some fairly serious poverty, but truly surrounded by love, and it mattered. There is power in love.

This idea of love in our work is powerful. I am a relentless credit giver, and I will own I have been been deeply influenced by the work of Amarillo College, and their inspirational leader Dr. Russell Lowery-Hart (we are in the back right of the picture during one of my pilgrimages to the Texas Panhandle). In fact, back in 2017, I pulled a group together at my former college, handed them an annotated version of Amarillo's 2017 Bellwether Award, and said "We should do this. Not tweaked or modified, just do this." I've evolved a little since then, but not much. I feel like I've known at my core for a very long time poverty is THE barrier our students face. I understand it is intersectional and complex, but a focus on poverty does so much and takes us to important work on equity from many angles. So, eliminating poverty barriers is the direction of my long obedience. I mentioned I have evolved from simply copying Amarillo's approach as I've learned more about what they have done. This work looks different in different places and circumstances, but it is centered on one thing, love. Dr. Lowery Hart recently wrote a powerful piece about just this idea Love Can Save Us. At the end of all of this work, I've learned that we simply do things differently for people we love, and we can choose to love the people at our colleges. And when we do, it changes everything. I love making complex ideas simple. Building your work on love is simple and powerful. Let me give you an example of how we are trying to do just that.

I was pleased when I arrived at MSC Southeast to see we had some strong emergency funds in place for students as well as a food pantry on both campuses. I believe fervently in "just-in-time" resources like these to help students bridge inevitable challenges. In fact, one of my first projects was to create an additional emergency fund when I arrived with some seed money from my occasional speaking gigs, and an internal campaign at our college. As the lead donor, my only condition was to have low to no barriers for students to access the fund. Essentially if they say they have a need, we try to meet it. In fact, all of our funds are basically on this model. Trust is love in action in my opinion. But, it isn't always easy. In these recent months, our use of emergency funds has increased rapidly, which is not a surprise. In fact, there is a good chance we will run out of our current funds long before the year is over. Our foundation Associate Director pulled together a group of key stakeholders to make sure we understood this fact and discuss what we might do, if anything. I have had years of advocating for those who have been judged as worthy/unworthy of help, and I admit I came to this meeting ready to go to war. I knew my arguments: a lack of resources does not mean you ration them, it means you pursue more resources. A lack of resources does not mean you start deciding who "really needs" help. I sat quietly at the beginning of the meeting ready to jump in with these arguments I've been making for years, waiting for someone to suggest we needed stricter screening criteria. The moment never came... The conversation was frank and direct. There is need, we do not have enough resources to meet the need. The consensus answer: let's find more resources... I get goosebumps typing it. The group shared our food pantries don't have restrictions, so why would emergency funds. And no one was interested in assessing worthiness. I would love to tell you it was all due to my 12 months of preaching the poverty-informed gospel, but it was deeper. This was love for students coming through. Love was a verb that day. Our funds and our pantries built on "take what you need when you need" are the same ethos as those people my parents were trying to be in the 70's. It is remarkable how often clear purpose meets success. We just received two small grants to enlarge our pantries and add refrigeration in the last two weeks. I am sure we will solve emergency funds too.

There are certainly other approaches to distributing resources. They may have positives, but they seem so often to lack love to me. Oh yeah, and figuring out who should get what is usually an inefficient waste of time and resources. Let me give you an example. I know of colleges who were able to distribute devices to students when learning went more remote. This is great on the surface, but is there love underneath? In talking with colleagues and friends, I think many places are inadvertently violating the maxim above. What do you love more, the people you are serving, or your rules? I hear complaints about devices not being treated "properly" or returned on time (or at all sometimes). Even worse, I hear statements like "these people are going to ruin it for everyone." Come on, are we interested in helping or are we interested in compliance? If you can distribute money or resources to people and you are upset a small number of them do not use it the way you want, would you really think of that as love? And if you accept the premise poverty is a context as opposed to a character flaw, can you admit you may not understand the why behind the things people do? Even if you think I am being bleeding heart and soft, how much time and resource do you want to waste chasing the small percentage of issues. Is that cost effective? Is it efficient? I'll bet you you save more money retaining students than you will ever lose on a few disappearing Ipads. And you won't make the 95% of people doing things the "right" way feel like suspects.

My role model Dr. Lowery-Hart said this in the article linked earlier "To be clear, rebuilding an entire college on the foundation of love was not easy in a higher education sector often devoid of it." He is absolutely correct. I shared a positive story from my college, but we have lots of work to do. Choosing love is not always easy, and we see those challenges every day, but it is the frame that matters. Love was the viewpoint of my parents and their friends back in those days when we had nothing. I often joke when I present about being Midwestern and Scandinavian/German by heritage, which can lead to being a little repressed:) Love is not a word I throw around easily, but I'm challenging myself to change and use it more frequently, including at work. Think of the people you love. Are there limits on what you would do to help them? Are there unforgivable sins they could commit? As I said earlier, I like to simplify things. In recent years, I have come to describe the work of colleges like mine as "changing economic reality for people we love." What would you do differently if you believed your job was changing reality for people you love? Would you be able to truly have a bad day if your purpose was as clear as that? Maybe part of this article is just a pep talk to this college administrator who has been through his most challenging year, but I'm hoping it resonates. Tomorrow, I'm going to get up and remember one of the reasons I am where I am in life is I was loved unconditionally. It is the gift of young hippie parents 50 years ago. I'm going to remember it, and I'm going to pass that gift on to our students. It costs me nothing and can change everything.