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As the world marks the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, here are the stories of seven students who came to Tufts already equipped with a purpose and a plan to make a difference in this changing world. 
'We Have Nothing To Be Afraid Of'There are a lot of things that get Jennifer Bailey, as she puts it, "riled up." One of them was the scene she encountered when visiting hurricane-devastated New Orleans last spring with Tufts Christian Fellowship. "As I was looking around at the houses, what struck me most is that it didn't look so different than poverty that I'd seen in different places," says the Tufts sophomore, who has many family members in rural Mississippi. "People are always living in these destitute conditions and nobody wants to assist them." Moments like these don't just get Bailey angry; they motivate her. That is why, at Tufts, she has gotten involved in political activism and community organizing. "My greatest assets at Tufts are the students," says Bailey. "They motivate me every day to get off my butt and do something in the world." It's a world, unfortunately, where Bailey sees many inequalities—including those which she witnessed firsthand in her hometown school system of Quincy, Ill. While studying test score patterns of minorities there, she observed that kids scored well on tests when they were in school environments at their socioeconomic level. But when they were placed into more socioeconomically diverse schools in middle and high school, their scores plummeted.
"You have these kids who are dropping out of high school and who are getting pregnant, and all these other issues start to filter in," she says. "There has to be some way to infiltrate that and establish some sense of self-esteem within these kids so they know despite whatever society may be telling them, that they are capable of achieving greatness no matter what their background is." Bailey believes that early intervention is the key to combating this problem. This summer, while working for Quincy's economic development office, she informally assessed the inequities in the school system and drafted suggestions for supplementary programs to help kids meet their potential. But she sees yet an even bigger picture. "It's about restructuring communities, breaking down these racial prejudices, prejudices against people of lower economic classes," the political science major explains. "So many people, especially minorities and low-income people, are ignored a lot of the time. It's almost like nobody recognizes them as people." Where Bailey sees a need for change, she works to achieve it. In high school, she was involved with a group called the Interfaith Youth Core, where she came together with teenagers from a wide range of backgrounds to foster dialogue and perform community service. On campus, she works with Tufts Democrats and is the Tufts coordinator for the Massachusetts gubernatorial campaign of Deval Patrick. In addition, she sits on the executive board for the Emerging Black Leaders Symposium, is a peer advisor for the Africana Center and is a member of both the Third Day gospel choir and the Pan-African Alliance.
She has also been involved with Tisch College—which, when she first visited Tufts, represented "everything I ever wanted to do in one building," Bailey says. "The people I've met in that program are probably the best network of people that I've ever met in my life." Bailey will become a Tisch Scholar this year, focusing on community organizing and promoting racial tolerance among local youth. "It's so important to realize personally that you can be empowered and that you can give back to your community by being empowered," she says. "There's never too young an age to get involved in community organizing and community activism and getting people riled up about something." Getting "riled up," Bailey believes, can be a good thing if it gets someone to speak out. "We're living in a period that's defined by fear in a lot of ways—fear of the unknown, fear of terrorism, fear of immigration," explains Bailey. "It's about breaking through that and realizing we have nothing to be afraid of. Taking a stand for what is just is not going to impede on anything."
Profile written by Georgiana Cohen All photos by Brian Loeb (A'06), except for Shenk photo by Joanie Tobin, Tufts University Photo This story originally ran on Sept. 11, 2006. |
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