"The Bowl"

I went hiking with my daughter this morning (That's her in the picture). She is trying to jolt me back toward fitness after I've neglected myself a little too much all winter. It was very nice, but the nicest part of the morning was including her in my Sunday morning ritual of delivering my weekend purchases to work to stock "The Bowl", our snacks in the lobby for students and anyone who wants them. We were talking about the increased amount of food we are going through (enrollment is up 40% since we started this work:)), and some of the things I've learned through almost a year of trying to create community around food. I thought I'd share some of that learning today.

The first thing I've learned isn't always so pleasant. I knew there was a lot of judgment put on people who are poor, but some days it is just too crystal clear. Poverty is a circumstance, not a character flaw, but that does not seem to be a universal belief. I have been asked many times how we ration what we provide. The simple answer is we don't. As I've written before, we think of The Bowl as hospitality for guests (food for thought), and we would never limit guests or judge them. But I see it every day in subtle and not so subtle ways. One of the less subtle ways is when people note something we are providing is name brand rather than generic, or is something they don't buy at their own home. The subtext always feels like we are doing something people don't deserve or is "too much", which seems suspect to me. These comments are often couched in the guise of concern about our ability to sustain what we are doing, but to be honest it just doesn't feel right. I often talk about the lessons of The Bowl and one of the clearest is that bias runs deep and I think examining how we react to The Bowl is a good way to find our own implicit bias. In fact, I use it as a way to expose just that conversation. What a great way to ask people in a relatively safe space, about why they feel the way they do. Our requirement to stand in awe of our students also causes us to make sure the food is presented nicely. That means when people bring us leftovers from meetings (interesting how often we feed ourselves) etc., we make sure it isn't just flung on the table but laid out for guests we care about. To be fair, The Bowl has also brought out the best in many folks, who contribute regularly, but I'd be lying if I said The Bowl didn't give us a chance to explore our own biases.

The Bowl also changes our proximity to students and that matters (power of proximity). I've been asked several times recently to present on our work and depending on the amount of time I have, I can be kind of verbose, or I can be pretty concise... When brevity is required, I have begun to discuss poverty-informed practice as "an intentional choice to love the students we have." It is hard to truly love someone from a distance and The Bowl puts us together, whether we are serving food or congregating around it. Just last Wednesday, a student saw me carrying in some food and thanked me for buying her breakfast most days. We laughed pretty hard when I showed her the sweet roll in my hand that I was enjoying myself. Our commitment to The Bowl as hospitality, not charity levels the playing field just a little bit and allows us to engage students as the adults they are. I also think for someone like me who grew up with occasional food insecurity, food and love are intertwined. My mom took great pride in feeding us, and even taking us out to eat once a month or so. At her funeral I told the story of how we went out to eat and how she told us it was to learn how to behave in restaurants. But as an adult, I suspect it was more about showing us we could have what other people did and our struggling circumstances didn't mean we couldn't do things that made us happy. My Mom (pictured with her grandchildren above) was quite a lady (lessons from Mom), I can feel the connection between food and love to this day. So, if we actually love the students we have (I feel like I should say trademark Amarillo College), food is one way to show it. It is a concrete, tangible act of caring that connects us in their pursuit of a different future.

The Bowl has also taught me a lot about perception of scarcity and how we build so many systems around fear of scarcity. Currently The Bowl is 100% stocked by donations, and as I said, usage goes up every week. Our original premise was that if we run out, we simply do, but I will admit that premise is anxiety provoking. Even this week, as the food seemed to fly out, my mind began to spin about whether we should have designated "fill-up" times or some other solution to make things last longer. In the end, I chose not to, because The Bowl is at some level an act of faith. I believe that purpose is compelling and sustainable so we trust that more food will appear and people like me will dig a little deeper. I can talk more about that in a moment, but first I want to talk about the effect of a scarcity mentality. So many policies and procedures at our campus and elsewhere are designed around a fear of running out of whatever resource we are distributing. It makes me think of emergency funds that don't get distributed (my own evolution) because of a fear of not having enough, or of not giving it to the "right" people. I often describe what we are trying to do as providing the things my middle-class kids get by default to people who didn't get them by the same accident of birth. Do you know the excess of resources my kids get? Isn't it remarkable that we feel like we have to ration things to people who have been left with so much less through no fault of their own? It gets back to the bias I mentioned earlier, and it is important to call it out. I love my children, but they certainly don't "deserve" things that people born to tougher circumstance do not. We work every day to not let scarcity pervert our systems of support. If we don't have enough to give everyone what they need, pursue more resources, don't withhold what people need.

Lastly, The Bowl has led to a months-long conversation between me and my work partner, Mandy. When we discuss The Bowl and the things it exposes, it always leads to the same discussion. The general topic is basically how much we can and should do, once we know the effects of poverty and inequity. I tend to be the compromising one who thinks we move incrementally toward a better and fairer world, and Mandy is more struck by the urgency and unfairness of current conditions. As people who have chosen careers that are focused on helping others, the question of how comfortable we allow ourselves to be, when others are struggling comes up again and again. Neither of us is rich, but we each live comfortably and sometimes that doesn't feel right when you are surrounded by people who are struggling to meet their basic needs. It doesn't sit right when those same people have the courage to pursue education in a system not always well designed for that pursuit. As I make my purchases every Sunday, and they grow larger, I am facing a very concrete version of this argument. It seems embarrassing to worry about how much I spend on the weekends, when I still go out for lunch or join friends for happy hour after work. There are many other examples of how we could be slightly less comfortable on behalf of those who have so much less, but the unanswerable question is how much is enough? After months of pondering (and debating), my current answer is I don't know... But I do know we have a guiding principle that"Every Barrier That Can Be Removed, Should Be Removed",and that provides some guidance. When you combine that commitment with truly loving the students you have, I think you will end up in the right place, or at least on the right path. Truthfully, we can probably all choose to be a little less comfortable while we pursue making the world a fairer place, and that's what I'm challenging my team to do. I don't know how much is enough, but I know we can continue to do more together. And for now, we keep on filling The Bowl.