Worcester Clemente’s Elizabeth Bacon and Jim Cocola
Win 2018 Binienda Award

Acceptance Speech for Worcester State University’s Community Engagement Award

 Elizabeth Bacon, Community Coordinator

The Clemente Course in the Humanities, Worcester, MA

Thank you, Mark, for this honor. It is joy to work with you and the students of the Representative John Binienda Center who have done so much to help create a culture of welcome for the children of our Clemente students. For those of you who are curious, Mark’s students are heroes for our kids. They plan and deliver exciting programs and projects each night throughout the year so that their parents can go to school. Mendrick Barzuela, Chris Galvao and Linda Trieu, we thank you.

At The Clemente Course in the Humanities here in Worcester, we strive for that culture of welcome every day. What does it mean, I wonder, — a culture of welcome? I am reminded of philosopher and writer David Foster Wallace’s story about the fish which he calls, “This is Water.” He begins, “There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happened to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning boys, how’s the water?  And the two young fish swim along for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water?”

Wallace uses this story to argue that the things that are the most important are the hardest to see and talk about. He states that a huge percentage of what he believes to be true and right is actually way off base. He argues that everyone’s “natural default setting” is to be totally self-centered and to see everything through the lens of the self.

Each night at the Clemente Course, twenty or so people come together to sit in a circle in a classroom on the second floor of the Education Wing at the Worcester Art Museum. In the middle of that table is an idea, a poem, a piece of art, a primary source document, a letter, a thought or some other evidence of human creation and reflection. Across the street in the basement of Trinity Lutheran Church, their children are doing the same thing, examining the same ideas so they all can talk more about them at home.

This program is not about deficits. It is about assets, assets that are present in all of us. Students examine that object together, sometimes debating long into the night after class has ended. A Muslim mother sits across from a gay asylum seeker from Jamaica. An African truck driver listens closely to a Puerto Rican break-dancer. A Vietnamese interpreter notices the Chinese characters in a Dominican former gang leader’s tattoo and asks him to explain. They realize that they have some beliefs in common.

Clemente makes no political or social judgment about its students or about the Course itself. It uses what is commonly known as the Socratic method as the foundation for its classes. Our professors do not tell our students what they think about the ideas presented, they ask the students to tell them what is seen and to share that with each other. Claudia Folgosa who graduated last year said in a recent speech at one of our Community Dinners, “What the course gave me is the freedom to choose how to live, and it helped me to relate to others who have had a different experience of life. It opened my eyes,”

Everyday is a chance live for others. In the 4^th Century BCE, Aristotle wrote, “Moreover, friendship would seem to hold cities together… if people are friends, they have no need of justice, but if they are just they need friendship in addition; and the justice that is most just seems to belong to friendship.” Maybe this is what best describes a culture of welcome. Friendship.

The city of Worcester is experiencing a renaissance. Buildings are being redeveloped and renovated. There is a new energy and a sense of excitement in the air. But cities are not just about buildings. They are mostly about the culture of their people. Clemente Worcester seeks to build a culture of welcome in support of our city, strengthened and birthed by the humanities.

However, make no mistake, all of us know that the water we swim in is dark and that the darkness around us is deep. High school children are taking to the streets demanding to feel safe, a right that should go without saying. Families are being torn apart by immigration officials. These are clearly extraordinarily dangerous times.

It is with immense gratitude that I report that our diverse and thoughtful students and faculty demonstrate each night, through the hard work of active listening, that we can build a culture of welcome and community, one where no one is left out. A community where study and reflection support the action of civic engagement needed to be supportive of those most in need of welcome. And I will do everything I can to help them. That smart, old fish in David Foster Wallace’s story deserves to swim in a school.