Sara Mousavi and Ravi S. Patel are University of California Berkeley students involved in Cal Corps community service programs.

Timelines and great expectations motivate Berkeley students to involvement in community service
 

By Albert C. Jones
America, The Diversity Place

BERKELEY, California — In all likelihood, these are they, not limited to, but the ones who come here to be inculcated with theories, enriched in methodologies, given special attention in practicum and presented with an array of examples; forethought to groom, that they are going out into the world to serve and to lead.

These are they — Sara Mousavi and Ravi S. Patel — and this is the University of California Berkeley; the University of California; Cal; or more profoundly, Berkeley — a name synonymous with Great Expectations.

More specifically this is 102 Sproul Hall, which up from the annals resonate academia, social conscience, free speech, accomplishment like in Nobel Laureates and that pictorial Berkeley timeline that fleshes out consanguinity.

“It was the best school I got into,” Patel, the senior history major, said about coming to Berkeley.

“I really wanted to get out of my community and they have a strong English department here,” said Mousavi, a senior English education major.

She is from La Mesa. He is from Bakersfield. Mousavi and Patel are leaders in the making; myriads, that any Berkeley student comes after. Cal Corps is their practicum.

Cal Corps Public Service Center is the hub where Berkeley students “find information on how to be a leader in the community — whether you want to volunteer once in a while, work with a student group, apply for a fellowship, take a service-learning class or get paid to address important social issues.”

As student director of Alternative Breaks, Mousavi oversees budget, finance and community partnerships. There are many partnerships with expansion as need in the nation arises.

“The program strives to connect students with service-learning,” Mousavi said of Alternative Breaks. “We spend time learning about the community or culture we will work with in a semester-long, student-led course. During spring break, we work with that community to perform only appropriate and needed service.

“By immersing one’s self in the community, the experience is often very emotional and humanizing,” Mousavi said. “We want students to create sustainable change by becoming allies and advocates for the communities they connect with.”

Patel was formerly education chair of the Magnolia Project, an off-shoot of Alternative Breaks, and is currently co-director.

The project description is succinct:

“The Magnolia Project is a student, staff and faculty initiative committed to raise on-campus awareness of the injustices surrounding Hurricane Katrina and to serve the disenfranchised, low-income communities of the region by organizing service trips and internships, advocating for political campaigns, providing support and mini-grants to non-profits in the area.

“We are a resource for all campus members who feel compelled to take action.”

Great expectations here began with the “12 Apostles,” who were the first, in 1873, to receive diplomas from UC. They appear in the pictorial timeline on the first floor wall in Sproul: The First 150 Years of Cal.

President John F. Kennedy spoke to 90,000 people in Memorial Stadium on Charter Day on March 23, 1962. Among his words, the President said, “. . . I am confident that I am talking to the future leaders of this state and country who recognize their responsibilities to the public interest.”

He reminded the 90,000 that “In its first graduating class it included a future Governor of California, a future Congressman, a judge, a State assemblyman, a clergyman, a lawyer, a doctor — all in a graduating class of 12 students!”

Kennedy’s speech in Memorial Stadium, which can be heard online, remains the largest public event in Berkeley history.

Students here also know from the timeline that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke here twice, at age 28, as the accomplished leader of the Montgomery Bus Boycott; spoke in Wheeler Hall on June 24, 1957 about “The Power of Peaceful Persuasion.”

The second time King spoke, as a Nobel Laureate, was on May 17, 1967. He spoke on the steps of Sproul. King’s anti-Vietnam War speech was titled “America’s Chief Moral Dilemma.”

Such giant footsteps, among the myriad, that Mousavi and Patel and others here follow. Their incubators are Alternative Breaks or the Magnolia Project, which sends 60 or more Berkeley students on three-week service trip to New Orleans in summer.

Patel has made three such trips to New Orleans over the summer to work at community building in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

“That first summer, it was one of the most amazing experiences of my life,” he said, remembering a city in disarray. “From here, I couldn’t get the full story of what was happening there. I wanted to go there and see it for myself.

“I spoke to one gentleman; he was a single father,” Patel said. “He had re-wired his house, but city inspectors closed it because of code violations. We helped him and his son get into a hotel room and then helped him rebuild his home. That one-on-one interaction is what sticks with me the most.”

In the succeeding summer, Patel, as a New Orleans City Hall intern, built a Web site for the Office of Recovery Development Administration. The office has since been taken out of commission.

Cal Corps, that is Alternative Breaks, attracts a diverse group of students from all academic backgrounds, ranging from public health to music.

“We always receive a large pool of applicants which result in a competitive application process,” Mousavi said. “This year, we had 84 participant spots and, for every student that got in, there was one that was waitlisted.”

Participation fees are curtailed through a variety of grants and sponsor funding.

“Our supervisor, Mike Bishop, once told us that he stopped working at Harvard and started working at Berkeley because he was inspired by how motivated they were here to work towards social change when there was so little funding,” Mousavi said. “I am not sure which colleges are likely participants, but it certainly doesn’t matter how much funding or how little funding a school might have.”

Berkeley had 48,640 applicants for fall 2009 and spring 2010 with 26.6 percent gaining admission. 35,843 students were enrolled in fall 2009, including 25,530 undergraduates and 10,313 pursuing graduate degrees.
Outside the Bay Area, in the apostolic tradition of the 12, Alternative Breaks has sent students to New Orleans, Los Angeles, San Diego, Tijuana, Campo, Delano and Mexico.

“As we strive to create sustainable community partnerships, we attempt to go to new places each year while sustaining previous trips,” Mousavi said. “This year, we are going to San Francisco, specifically the Tenderloin district, to examine homelessness. We are going to organic farms in the greater Bay Area in a trip titled ‘Food Justice.’”

She said, “We are going to Los Angeles to look at free health clinics, to the San Diego-Tijuana border to look at border dynamics and Delano in the Central Valley to understand the farm workers’ experience.”

Delano was the epicenter of the United Farm Workers of America movement led by Cesar E. Chavez and Dolores Huerta.

At Campo, a Native American reservation in San Diego County, students saw health disparities. The Environmental Protection Agency detected uranium in the water. Citizens were urged to stop drinking the water. Some students wanted the people to immediately stop bathing in the water, too.

Some of these same students went to New Orleans to provide post-Katrina relief.

“You are not just learning charity work mostly to make yourself feel good,” Patel said. “You learn the difference from charity and community service. You learn what solidarity is with those whom you are working with. Cal Corps has created an environment that is less about competition but more about the service.”

For sure, these are they. Given those who appear in the Timeline of 150 Years, the ones who have come and gone and made their contributions, there are high expectations that come with being at Berkeley.

“Yes, definitely, you know there are high expectations before you come here,” Mousavi said. “I had one person say to me you are from Berkeley, when we were out doing community service in the San Diego area, you don’t understand. We all come from different backgrounds. We are not there to inspire people to go to Berkeley, but give them the tools to do whatever they can with their education.

“Alternative Breaks really opened my eyes to service, solidarity instead of charity,” said Mousavi, who plans on attending graduate school. “I think wherever my career takes me it will be centered on service. It has become a passion to me.”

Patel plans to attend law school in the East.

“I am not sure if the rest of my career will be dedicated to mostly community service,” he said. “I don’t know if I will be a community organizer or a pro bono lawyer. I don’t know if that is my destiny. I do know as an accountant or a lawyer, there is a moral way to do it.”

There is a former community organizer in the White House.

“In New Orleans, most of us who were there two years ago never realized that it was possible for a community organizer to become President,” Patel said.

Sproul Hall on the campus of the University of California Berkeley is where the interview with Sara Mousavi and Ravi S. Patel took place.