July 2008 Stories

Listening as Letting Go

Cassandra Farrin ’05 was a freshman when the two planes struck the Twin Towers. She had been at Willamette two weeks. A week earlier a friend had been struck by a car; a week later another friend was struck by a car. Both died, and Farrin was in a state of searching.

“We were in class with Professor Dave McCreery and asked him many, many questions,” the religious studies graduate says. “He had spent time in the Middle East and helped us understand the difference between media portrayals and the real Islam.”

It was Farrin’s first experience in thinking across cultures and religions, and it projected her onto a meaningful path, one that is now leading her to graduate studies in comparative religion at the University of Lancaster in Great Britain, courtesy of a Fulbright grant. She competed with more than 500 applicants for 10 spots in a Fulbright exchange program in the U.K.

So how did a young woman from the farm town of Emmett, Idaho — population 6,500 — win one of the most competitive grants in the world? She did it by working hard, of course, but also by being genuinely curious about the world.

“In my studies, I want to compare religions without simplifying, objectifying or judging,” Farrin says. “We can feel threatened by a person whose view of the world challenges our core values, we can allow fear and discomfort to create a protective barrier, or we can take a step toward greater understanding.

“With globalization there’s more border crossing,” she says. “I’m not talking about just geographical borders, but borders of ideas, cultures and religious beliefs. When you connect with ideas from a different context, you can’t argue in terms of black and white anymore. There are too many systems.”

Farrin says her first lesson in listening across cultures came from a deaf student at Tokyo International University in America (TIUA), located at Willamette. “Nao Kawakami read lips,” Farrin says, “and didn’t learn sign language until she came to America. She taught me to listen. Americans create friendship by giving information as a gift, but with Asian friends you’re expected to give conversational space. American culture prioritizes the speaker’s responsibility to convey meaning as clearly as possible, but we don’t always notice how the way we listen impacts a conversation. Developing this skill in inter-religious and intercultural dialogue is an important step toward authentic communication.

“As a freshman, I was a conservative Christian talking across cultures with my TIUA friends, many who believed in a fusion of Buddhism and Shintoism. It was difficult trying to negotiate across culture and religion, until I realized I had to change my questions. We were starting from such different places.”

Farrin gave up playing string bass with the University Chamber Orchestra to create time for her new relationships with TIUA students, but still managed to pack a lot of experience into four short college years. She explored her spiritual vocation in a semester at Yale Divinity School; helped found TellUs, a journal about Study Abroad experiences; and was selected by the college dean to contribute an essay in a university publication about freedom of expression.

After graduation Farrin taught English in Japan — “I wanted to spend time there before the rest of my life started” — but soon returned to TIUA as a campus life assistant and community coordinator. “I still have all the students’ names memorized,” she says, “and I still get emails saying, ‘Do you remember me?’ Of course I do!”

Farrin also filled in as interim director for Willamette’s Community Service Learning, where she helped students organize volunteer trips and activities. “Volunteering is a great way to go into an unfamiliar setting, which is key for learning how to listen to people who are different from ourselves,” she says.

In her graduate studies Farrin plans to look at the nature of listening and its relevance to comparative religion, with an eventual goal of becoming a professor of religious studies. “I hope my students will become more interested in what they don’t understand about others,” she says.

For information about the Fulbright and other scholarships, contact Monique Bourque in the Student Academic Grants and Awards Office on the second floor of the University Center.

The Health Care that Doesn’t Trickle Down

Tye Sundlee ’08 is heading for the unknown this year, courtesy of a Fulbright grant. He’ll be living in an unfamiliar country speaking an unfamiliar language analyzing an unfamiliar health care system, and he’s looking forward to it.

Sundlee’s Fulbright experience began with boot camp, a language immersion program in Vermont where he pledged to speak only Russian for nine weeks. No text messages, calls or letters in English — no exceptions. Sundlee, who has spoken English, Japanese, Spanish and Danish, says, “It was probably the most frustrating thing I’ve ever done.”

From there he’ll head to Ukraine, where he’ll apply his economics degree toward the study of resource allocation in the country’s struggle against HIV/AIDS. Ukraine was a natural choice: The country has the highest HIV caseload in Europe.

Sundlee will work with the International HIV/AIDS Alliance looking at a classic problem for non-government organizations (NGOs): how to administer large sums of money without having them whittled away all the way down the supply chain, until there’s nothing left for the intended recipients.

In 2006 the World Bank suspended its tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS program in Ukraine because only 2 percent of the initial $60 million had resulted in services for the high-risk groups it was intended to serve: expectant mothers, street children, drug users, sex workers and prisoners.

“There’s always a question of where you apply your efforts, where you send donations for the greatest amount of good with the least amount of overhead or outright corruption,” Sundlee says. “I’ll be collecting sensitive information, so cultural awareness will be job one.”

Sundlee will use a technique that has maximized results in many countries, one based on evaluating past allocations in order to make effective decisions about future allocations. He’ll identify goods and services that were actually delivered, quantify the benefits and overhead of each program, and identify programs that deliver services most efficiently. Before his departure next year he’ll give his findings to the International HIV/AIDS Alliance to help them in their decision-making.

Hard data can’t come soon enough. HIV/AIDS is increasing exponentially in Ukraine’s young people, due in part to high unemployment. “This is a ticking time bomb for their economy,” Sundlee says. “The virus is crippling individuals and depleting the current and future workforce. It also lowers government revenues while requiring higher expenditures.

“This experience will give me an opportunity to learn firsthand how health care policy is made,” says Sundlee. He’ll live in the capital city of Kyiv, an old city whose historic churches abut modern apartment buildings.

“After graduate school I want to work with NGOs around the world, helping with strategic health care decisions. I really like international life,” says Sundlee, who has lived in Japan, Denmark and New Zealand. “It’s invigorating to live in another country. And with not-for-profit organizations, you can target a social goal and not be driven by the bottom line. That freedom allows you to focus on the main objective, whether it’s alleviating malaria or HIV/AIDS.”

As a foreigner speaking a new language asking delicate questions about a delicate subject, Sundlee says the experience will be humbling. “I’ll be flying by the seat of my pants,” he says with a smile. “There’s a very thin line between being brave and foolhardy. I hope I’m on one side and not the other.”

For information about the Fulbright and other scholarships, contact Monique Bourque in the Student Academic Grants and Awards Office on the second floor of the University Center.

Giving New Meaning to Privilege

“Why is my leg wet?”

This was my first thought as I awoke in the middle of the night on day five of our weeklong Take a Break trip. I rustled around inside the sleeping bag cocoon I had constructed to protect me from the rain and freezing temperatures outside my tent. That was when I discovered a large wet spot inside my bag.

A glance at my Indiglo watch revealed the time, just after 4 a.m. I was slightly panicked as I tried to emerge from my sleepy haze — why was I wet? Hours earlier I had listened to showers pounding my canvas rain fly outside as I drifted to sleep. But that was supposed to be outside only. I thought I was safe from the elements.

I finally got the courage to pull an arm out of the cocoon and feel the bottom of my tent. Pushing down on the nylon was like patting the top of a waterbed — water had pooled beneath my tent and soaked through multiple layers before reaching my skin. Anyone who has tent camped will tell you the thought of having to get out of your tent in the night, especially in cold weather, is like going to the dentist to get a tooth pulled — you know you must do it, but the dread makes you put it off as long as possible. I had no choice — I was getting wetter by the minute. I took my damp sleeping bag outside and into one of our 12-person vans, where I sprawled across a bench seat, a chilly but dry respite for another hour’s restless sleep.

Did I mention that this fun-filled pre-dawn experience was on my birthday?

I probably shouldn’t start my story with this anecdote, because by now you’re thinking Take a Break sounds like a positively miserable experience. But despite — and even partly because of — this incident, TaB was one of the most wonderful journeys I’ve taken in recent years.

Before I participated in TaB, I had only heard students’ post-trip stories of the wonderful activities they took part in, and I knew nothing of the difficulties they faced in planning, implementing and participating in these projects. The wet sleeping bag anecdote gives you a taste of what the participants withstand for the sake of this experience, one that changes, perhaps forever, their lives and the lives of the people they meet.

Created seven years ago, TaB is a student-led alternative break program that allows Willamette students, faculty and staff to travel across the country, combining community service with learning about social justice issues. Every part of the program is facilitated by students — including the months of planning to prepare each trip and raise $70,000 to pay for the total cost of the program.

TaB’s motto is CJS2 — Community. Justice. Service. Simplicity. Participants learn about problems faced by members of communities they might not otherwise encounter. But they don’t just lend a hand and leave. Each day is filled with time for reflection on the projects completed, the people encountered and the lessons learned. And in another show of solidarity with the communities they visit, participants live simply during the trip. For our group, this meant camping in a local state park, eating vegetarian, and going with only a few cell phones, no iPods and one laptop (mine, as I was the resident writer).

Our trip focused on sustainable and local agriculture in the Willamette Valley. We explored area farms, including several that provide produce to Bon Appétit’s food service at Willamette, to learn about the practices of these farmers who work tirelessly so we can choose between various types of lettuce at our salad bar and have fresh strawberries atop our desserts. But TaB isn’t just about what we learn — it’s also about providing service and having a positive effect on the communities we inhabit. So as we visited these farms, we worked. We hoed weeds, planted corn seeds destined for a greenhouse, spread compost and tied ropes to guide young tomato plants. One of the farmers later said our work put him weeks ahead of schedule.

We also had another job: Listening to their stories. Many of the farmers we visited use organic or sustainable practices, ultimately making their work much more expensive and difficult. But they choose to farm this way because of strong feelings about the way the Earth should be treated or about the condition and quality of the food we eat. And they want to tell their stories. They want you to understand why supporting local farmers makes your meal actually taste better, and they want you to know why you should worry about whether pesticides were sprayed on your berries or what food a cow ate before being turned into the burger on your plate. Or even just to recognize that your burger used to be a cow.

When you spend a day trudging through mud and manure on a farm, doing several hours of manual labor, often during rain and near-freezing temperatures, one important need immediately drifts to the top of your consciousness: a hot shower. The same applies to when you wake up in a tent after several days away from home and you can’t feel your toes. A hot shower starts to become the one thing you would trade for every penny in your bank account. It’s a privilege you never considered a privilege until you started the TaB trip.

And that word — “privilege” — starts to make you reflect on the people you’ve met during the trip, whether they’re poor farmworkers breaking their backs to feed their families, homeless veterans navigating the streets of Portland, or children living in a crumbling home because it’s all their parents can afford. You may be camping during a cold snap or sleeping on the floor of a church, not showering for days on end. For the people you meet, this is life. You only have to endure this for a week, and you choose to do it. It’s a sobering lesson for TaB participants, one that runs deeper than the surface issues they encounter daily on the trip.

Admittedly, I wasn’t thinking about this as I dragged my wet bag from my tent to the van. Or as I shivered every morning, waiting for the magical “pop” of the electric pot indicating the water was ready for my tea. Or any of those evenings we struggled to get a real fire or a working camp stove to cook dinner for 14 of us. But as we reflected together each evening about our work of that day, it seemed to be the lesson I couldn’t easily forget. And I hope that for me, just like many TaB participants, it will be the lesson that guides me in the future.

My birthday started wet and miserable, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Since returning from her Take a Break experience, Willamette University Staff Writer Sarah Evans feels more comfortable donning rubber boots and loves seeking her favorite farmers’ foods at Goudy Commons. To learn more about how to support or participate visit the TAB website or call 503-370-6807.

Reflections from New Center Director

Nothing is certain but death and taxes, and in Oregon, taxes are not as certain as they could be, according to Professor Fred Thompson, who directs Willamette’s Center for Governance and Public Policy Research. The center examines a variety of issues that affect Oregon citizens and helps communities make evidence-based decisions, not decisions based on wishful thinking. Fairly often, that wishful thinking involves state revenues.

“Progressive tax structures are, by their nature, volatile, which means that Oregon has one of the most volatile revenue flows in the country,” says Thompson, who provided financial consulting for the Department of Defense and once directed the analytic studies unit for the California State Department of Finance. “We end up betting on the future every year with a cloudy crystal ball.”

The state constitution requires a balanced budget. If the state comes out ahead, money is returned to citizens. If revenue falls short, the state must scramble. “Because of the state’s tax structure, planners at every level are unable to forecast revenues from one year to the next,” Thompson says. “There’s nothing inherently wrong with volatility, as long as we plan for it.”

If the Atkinson Graduate School of Management professor had his way, he would reinvent government, at least the fiscal end of it. “It seems me that borrowing is often hidden, as when states borrow from pensions to cover a recession. The other easy way states generate cash is by not maintaining infrastructure, which reduces life spans of buildings and roads. Instead of borrowing and spending at a steady rate, we spend like drunken sailors when there’s an economic boom and cut taxes when there’s not.”

In addition to promoting realistic fiscal policies, Thompson has promoted the effective use of technology in government and business, co-writing the book, Digital State at the Leading Edge. “Information technology is driving all the advances in the American economy,” Thompson says. “If we don’t understand how to take advantage of it we will fall behind. Governments tend to want to buy turnkey solutions from consultants — solutions that often don’t work. When you don’t know what you want or why, it’s easy to run into an information technology fiasco.”

Thompson also recently co-authored From Bureaucracy to Hyperarchy in Netcentric and Quick Learning Organizations: Exploring Future Public Management Practice, a book that explores the new organizational model. “Organizations and corporations are much more equalitarian in design than organizations from the previous century, which was fundamentally a time of bureaucracy and mass production,” Thompson says. “Now we see more small companies with less vertical integration than there used to be. Businesses are more democratic in nature.”

Thompson was founding editor of the International Public Management Journal, now based at Harvard University. The journal focuses on how people can reinvent government, initiate performance management, and establish accountability in budgets. He served for several years as senior economist on the staff of the Economic Council of Canada and between 1996 and 2006 advised several transitional states of Eastern Europe about financial management, serving on an especially effective United Nations Commission in the Republic of Macedonia. The recommendations were instituted and boosted Macedonia’s economic growth in preparation for its entry into the European Union. “Per capita GNP growth is now growing at 6–7 percent annually,” Thompson says. “Macedonia is one of a handful of states where U.S. diplomacy has done a first-rate job of promoting political stability and a stable transition to sustained growth, despite serious ethnic cleavages.”

When he’s not thinking about managing money, information technology or Atkinson classes, Thompson is hiking, camping or fishing in the Cascade Mountains, where he and his family own a rustic cabin.

Willamette University’s Center for Governance and Public Policy Research supports the policymaking process in the Northwest with research and analysis. The center is founded on the principle that collaboration between the academic and policy-making communities can improve government. In addition to research, the center sponsors conferences, seminars and workshops.