Across Nassau St., down Witherspoon
350 students serve as tutors, English teachers, SAT coaches, Big Brothers and Sisters with Community House
By Nancy Beth Jackson
Volunteers Melissa Armstrong '02 (l), Tamara
Johnson '00, Patrick Rose '01 and Jeffery Mah '02
(r) with youngsters at the 30th Anniversary block
party on Clay Street, September 26 (Photo by
Ron Carter)
Thirty years ago seven Princeton undergraduates crossed Nassau Street and kept on going down Witherspoon. They were of different colors but had one purpose: to fight racism by sharing their Ivy education with disadvantaged youngsters in the neighborhood. Out of their commitment was born Community House.
This year 350 students have signed up to follow in their footsteps. They may be less vocal than the students of the 1960s, but Community House director Marjorie Young believes they are no less committed.
Now as then, she says, "Moving into the community is a very bold move."
Young made her own bold move into the community as an 11-year- old who arrived from Haiti in 1975 speaking only French and Creole. Afterschool tutoring (though not by Community House) gave her the tools to master English and go on to graduate from Princeton High School and earn a psychology degree at Rutgers. Until three years ago, when she joined Community House, she directed activities at the Clay Street Learning Center.
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Expanding anniversary year
Tutoring is at the core of the work done by the Princeton volunteers. It comes in many forms. Community House members can be found teaching English to immigrants, working with at-risk students at Princeton High School, sharing test-taking skills in a SAT Prep program, preparing preschoolers for first grade and serv ing as Big Sisters or Big Brothers to middleschool students.
In this anniversary year, volunteers are expanding their efforts. Nearly 150 more signed up at Community House this year than last.
Through the Freshmen 2 Freshmen Outdoor Action Challenge, the program plans to match up University freshmen with Princeton High School freshmen in one-on-one mentoring relationships intended to last four years. It will also reach out to preteens with Step-Up!, a tutoring and mentoring program for fifth and sixth graders at John Witherspoon Middle School. And performing arts will be used to develop children's selfconfidence in a new program at the Clay Street Learning Center.
"It's so easy to stay on campus in a little bubble," says Camellia Falcon '00. "Princeton Cemetery and beyond seems like never-never land. But it's important to know the problems of the community in close proximity."
"Each one, reach one"
The community and the issues have changed over 30 years, with Community House now responding with projects to help fight HIV/AIDS and to support Hispanic immigrants, who began arriving in Princeton in the late '80s. But the original motto remains a watchword: "Each one, reach one each one, teach one."
Not all the teaching has been done by the Princeton
students. They have been on the learning end of the
relationship, as well.
John Mavros '71 (r), one of the original Community
House volunteers, with Princeton resident Kyle
Stephens, who was one of his five-year-old
tutees (Photo by Ron Carter)
John Mavros '71 and the other founders went out into the community both to serve and to benefit. "I became completely turned off by the effects of the so-called 'Princeton experience.' Books and subjects were becoming more and more boring as they became more and more abstract in their logic and models," Mavros wrote in his senior thesis on the beginnings of Community House. "No organization that I had become familiar with helped to provide an opportunity to me to deal with the so-called real world."
Students in the '90s still feel like Mavros. According to the Community House web page, designed by a volunteer, "Community House exists as a mechanism for community service However, equally important is its existence as a place for nurturing students' personal identity and growth. For many students Community House is a place for sharing of ideas and airing of challenges in a place where needs are understood and valued." (See www.princeton.edu/~house/)
Current volunteers still talk about Becky Clay '97, a religion major from San Antonio. They joke that Community House today has "a lot of Texans," perhaps because of Clay's recruiting technique of grabbing friends by the arm and marching them over to sign up.
But what Clay remembers is how much Community House contributed to her years at Princeton as a woman of color who didn't "fit the mold" and was "unwilling to be molded."
Now in seminary in Michigan, she says, "I did it to help others, but Community House helped me a lot. I can't image Princeton without Community House, which made me remember every day that I was at Princeton for more than a degree. It helped me get through my Princeton experience."
As in the beginning, Community House is made up primarily of people of color, but their hues are far more varied now, and women predominate.
"We reflect the effort the University is making, and part of what we're doing is aiding that effort," says Ijeoma Azodo '00, who works with the Big Brothers and Big Sisters Program.
University's backyard
Over the past 30 years Community House has faced its own challenges, scrambling for members, for funding, for an address.
The first volunteers created a residential community action center at 164 Witherspoon St. in a vacant building owned by the University. From that center, known as Community House, the Princeton students looked out for the needs of their neighbors in the surrounding 12-block area. They worked directly with churches, parents and schools.
But when the Princeton Arts Council acquired the property in 1982, Community House couldn't afford the rent. The program moved first to University Place and then five years ago to the Third World Center, where it operates under the auspices of the Office of Student Life.
In the next few years, Young wants to increase the level of community involvement, working more closely with other players in the neighborhood and at the same time becoming more visible on campus.
"Community House is a treasure that the Princeton campus is largely unaware of," she says. "For 30 years Community House has been engaged in significant and extremely valuable community development work that has made a dramatic impact not just in the lives of individuals, but in the whole John Witherspoon community, Princeton University's backyard. "