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Argerey Stapakis

Honors 231C

Final Paper

March 14, 2018

A week or so ago, I had a conversation about what it means to be vulnerable. A colleague

and I discussed how interesting it is that we all have this inherent ability to be vulnerable. We

agreed that part of this vulnerability stems from the one biological act that we all share- sleep.

Sleep is the one thing, besides breathing in oxygen and out carbon dioxide, that every human

cannot live without. No drug can substitute sleep, well not for long, as it transcends between

social class and through cultural barrier as a necessity for life. So, as a result, whether it is 4

hours or 12 hours, or something in between, there is some specified point in the 24-hour trip

rotating about the Earth’s axis, where we must let down our guards and trust that, in that time

period, we will be okay, that nothing will happen to us, and that we will wake up the next day in

the same state as we left the world, many hours before. This creates a fragile understanding, a

collective agreement, that everyone will participate in this act of vulnerability. To be vulnerable

is to trust within yourself to be vulnerable, to trust those around you to not take advantage of

your vulnerability and to accept a universal truth that we all share and experience these both on a

daily basis.

When we start to ask questions regarding poverty and homelessness, inequities and

instabilities, we start to put into question these vulnerabilities. It was before I took this class that

I relied on those within my close circle of privilege to understand my vulnerability. I

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unknowingly understood other’s vulnerabilities as a lack of trust within their own respective

personal relationships, due to personal decision making that they held, instead of the larger

relationships they shared with and within society. The act of othering is simply an inability to

understand other’s vulnerabilities. We assume “they”, whoever “they” are, are unable to be

vulnerable in the same ways we understand vulnerability to be, maybe they are too vulnerable or

not vulnerable enough. We see their vulnerabilities as weakness instead of as commonalities to

ourselves. “They” are simply not the same.

In more ways than one, this course put into question values and rationales that many of us

had come in with. It opened up a space, of you guessed it, vulnerability. It allowed the group

question their values and the values of those around them while encouraging us to think through

why we chose to identify with the values that we did. With the help of researchers and authors,

scholars and social workers, we were able to build on ideas about race and class, privilege and

politics, and most importantly, the structural forces that influenced them all.

This course weaved a thick and prominent thread between experiences and discourses of

the importance of community. As I knew it before this course, community was a way of opting

in. You opt into spaces where you feel comfortable and opt out of those in which you do not.

This is how you build your community. The problem with this is, that it is easy to forgot about

the vulnerabilities that come with and within a community, and most importantly between

communities. It’s a simplistic and beautifully naïve way of thinking, to think that individually

contributing in a morally decent manner to those within your community is enough; to navigate

solely within your smallest circles is enough. I saw this because this is what I used to think. I

used to think that being morally sound to those I interacted with was enough. All of the people I

interacted with though, were privileged. They came from privilege and propagated it without
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even having to think about it. My community never questioned their privilege because they never

had to. If you never internalize the issue of homelessness, you never have to deal with it. This is

thinking only designated for my community. To truly think about the intricacy of the issues we

discussed in this course, I have found that one must go out of his or her way, to connect, to re-

weave this thread, and to remember the vulnerabilities we all share, especially between

communities.

The UW is in itself a community. It is a community of learners, sharers, doers and

innovators. But it is still a community. It can be just as easy to get lost within the inevitable

confines of this community and oftentimes, this can be the biggest inhibitor of large scale

academic “success”. There are a lot of different ways to become “educated,” but to expand your

community, engage with a community that is not your own, or better yourself though the

understandings of the vulnerabilities of others is an opportunity that is not often taken advantage

of here. We are not as apt to go out and volunteer, talk to someone we don’t know outside of

campus, or become engaged in this type of cross community discourse because we have become

too involved with shaping our own autonomy within this one community. We engage when it is

required and opt in when we are told to do so. Community engagement matters, in short, because

it allows a malleable mind access to the tools necessary to expanding one’s community. It gives

information in a textbook some context and students a sense of purpose that cannot be read or

written about. Without this perspective, I argue, an “education” is just a better understanding of

the specific community in which you were educated. Community engagement is critical because

it is a vehicle for expanding this UW community and making it a space of inclusion instead of

exclusion.
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This quarter, my community expansion vehicle was helping out as a research assistant to

graduate students in the University of Washington’s School of Public Health. Here, I worked on

two projects, one that looked at incarceration, debt and homelessness and the other looking

specifically at an evaluation of the Licton Springs Village.

While I argue that community engagement should be integrated throughout coursework

at the UW, I am skeptical as to how to best do so due to the experiences I had while working

with the first project. The first public health project looked to investigate incarceration, debt, and

the intersectionality with homelessness. In order to do this, we were guided into homeless

encampments across Seattle in order to ask a series of questions regarding these three categories.

There was a small part of me that felt uncomfortable during my first visit and it was not until

after, when I had time to reflect on the day, that I found why. I had come to the conclusion that I

had left feeling this way due to the uncomfortable nature of power dynamics. The power I held

coming into the camps was stark and prominent, sticking out like a sore thumb. Here I was, a

UW student, going into a space, a community of “others” asking questions about topics that I had

assumed, through the research question, were applicable. It put the assumption on the researcher

and the uncomfortable guilt on the participants I interviewed.

There is no doubt that this research question is important, that it serves as a purpose of

worth, but the more and more I reflect on those first couple of weeks, the more and more I

specify and articulate what community engagement ought to be and what it ought to strive to

avoid, for engaging with a community should not be about highlighting their differences, their

vulnerabilities, but rather finding ways to empower groups from within, look to weave more

threads, and start a dialogue based on these commonalities. It is that simple. Sometimes, we go

on a “quest to use discourse as an attempt to make coherent the incoherencies of public life or
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life generally, one discourse trades on another, borrowing metaphors for justification, creating an

inevitable layering of meaning” (Schram). Homelessness is in itself incoherent. It is wrong and it

is difficult to understand until you unpack the structural factors at play. Even then, it is

unsettling. I think that there could have been a better way to enter the space for this research. We

could have come to an already established community meeting time and talk about what research

like this could provide, how it would be used to benefit the group, and how best to have a

discussion within the group about what was both comfortable and important to disclose. What

were some themes they saw within their community, how did they affect the community’s safety

and well-being, and most importantly, how could they be solved? The communities I interviewed

were full of individuals who had already endured the cumulative weight of assumption about

how they contribute, what they wear or how they look, and how happy they are. Putting more

assumption felt like I was stratifying the space instead of neutralizing it. There was this

uncomfortable air of leveling due to this assumption, the participant partly leveling up while me,

unknowingly, leveling down in discourse, language, and mannerisms. This is not the way it

should be.

The second project I was involved with had a different approach. It was so different, that

its results and findings are being withheld from the pubic due to their controversial nature. The

research aimed to go into a community and empower it to function more efficiently. It looked to

provide resources where they were needed and give voice to a group of individuals who had not

been asked how they wished to identify with, prefer, or provide within their own community.

Usually, “citizens are empowered to act, but in ways that are limiting and confining” (Schram).

This project did not feel like this. This project did not place an assumption that the residents of

Licton Springs were depressed or unemployed or addicted to drugs, it simply aimed to gain a
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better understanding of how to best facilitate a stronger sense of community both within the

village and between the village and its surrounding community. Here we were, students of

privilege and power, asking the simple questions of “how can this space better serve you?” and

“how do you feel stable?”.

There was a fluidity to the work done at Licton Springs, one that felt natural and real and

what community engagement should feel like. We were not morphing people into statistics or

providing assistance to fuel our own sense of moral decency. We were not looking in with a lens,

we were coming together to form a purpose. And while I still respect and value the work done

with the first project, it would be a lie to say that it achieved this same level of vulnerability.

Within the group of graduate students that I worked alongside, there was this “can do” attitude

and collective efficiency that I admired because it so strongly resembled the idea of what I

thought to be a culture of care. To participate in a culture of care, even though ours might have

been small, was profound. It made me wonder why I valued it so much and how I could integrate

this same level of impact in my own life. A culture of care is more than a way of living, it is a

sort of collectivistic mindset that allows for these cross-community engagements to exist. Being

a part of this project elevated my values to a new dimension. It made me prioritize some values

while subsiding others. Most importantly, it gave me a hopeful outlook on what can sometimes

feel like an overwhelming and dark, problem-filled world.

Being a young adult in the current political environment holds a large weight. As I am

sure it has been felt by many before me, I feel the heaviness that comes along with trying to

grasp onto a political identity that matches my values and the values of my community. Agency,

no matter how big or small, is a pretty powerful tool and with it comes this responsibility to vote

informatively, act respectfully, and continue dialogue with those who oppose you with great
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care. The Licton Springs Village research is giving residents this agency. It is disrupting what

has been with what will be. It encouraging cross-community involvement and expansion.

Furthermore, it is allowing a group of individuals, who previously were not granted the

opportunity to be vulnerable without direct societal judgement, the chance celebrate their

vulnerabilities with the trust of those around them. Most of the projects of disruption this quarter

follow similar paths. They challenge the discourse structured to impoverish a specific

community and find ways to restructure this discourse from the bottom up by asking instead of

assuming.

Regardless of political association, it is easy to see that the number of people

experiencing homelessness in our Seattle community is rising. More people do not have someone

to watch their back and provide the space for vulnerability than ever before. It has been a

privilege of mine to not have had to question what I constitute as a basic human right. It was not

until this course that I began to solidify and shape what I now consider to be the baseline needs

of every individual. As a country, we fight for human rights overseas but are blinded by the

insufficient needs of those at home. Poverty in other countries is a pity while poverty in our own

country is a choice. Those who are impoverished do not deserve this right to be vulnerable in a

socially accepted light. All too soon, I came to realize that certain rights were not even rights at

all, instead just tokens of deservedness determined and given without question. Marshall

elaborates on this idea by saying that “there is no universal principle that determines what those

rights and duties shall be, but societies in which citizenship is a developing institution create an

image of an ideal citizenship against which achievement can be measured and towards which

aspiration can be directed”. Deviations from the ideal citizen do not allow us to imagine the

many different forms that citizens come in. How do we better understand what it means to be a
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citizen if we are not able to hold responsibility for the shortcomings of system that categorizes its

citizens based on deservedness? Everything we operate around as a country is based on a

baseline of privilege. You must hold privilege to exercise your rights. Without privilege, there

exists a space where it is not. The boundary of what this space is constitutes how much of a

citizen you are allowed to be. We, as Marshall says, “confer the legal capacity to strive for the

things one would like to possess but do not guarantee the possession of any of them” on this land

built on the freedoms of the privileged (Marshall).

Exercising political agency, in itself, is difficult, because it forces one to publically

express his or her values, while choosing to align with those who promise the execution of these

values on a political scale. This is why politics can be so uncomfortable. It is uncomfortable to

express your own values and vulnerability to those who you cannot be certain will agree with

you. Homelessness is a political issue. It is an issue of class and gender and economic status, but

more importantly it is an issue of privilege. We can say that “homelessness is a hole in the

system; every problem in America that tends to sideline people, marginalize people, can push

people into that hole” (Demirel). But how we address this hole, through our political agency,

becomes a different story. How we choose to expose the simple truth that we live in an

inequitable space is uncomfortable, especially as someone of privilege. Privilege is not

something that you can wrap up and give away. Declaring that you are privileged is not the same

as doing something about it. It is not tangible and it is not simple. To disenfranchise privilege is

to disentangle an entire system of stratification. What had started as community differentiation

has turned into community misunderstanding. We can no longer look at another person without

putting them in a group, and sizing that group up, to ultimately, this idea of the ideal citizen.
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Solving poverty requires this revisualization and realization of this common

vulnerability. But, while it is not easy to tell others to re-envision the ways in which they view

those around them, it is easy to show them. This is why community engagement is so vital. We

need community engagement to mirror the concept of a culture of care in our schools. We need

to teach what it means to be one instead of many. Instead of teaching moral decency within a

small circle, we teach how to lean into other circles. We have to release some of our privilege in

order to shrink the differences that many hold without having to think about it. As the Invisible

Knapsack argued, we walk round with our greatest privileges without even knowing they exist.

So, we must acknowledge them, understand them and relate them to others.

The timing of this course could not have been more perfect in my college career. As a

graduating senior, I am going to go out into the world with a heightened awareness of my own

privilege, the privilege of those around me, and in what ways I can enact a culture of care. I wake

up questioning the single story instead of accepting it. I have a better understanding of the

structure in which we live and the best ways to unravel it. I hope to engage in acts of disruption

but also acts of empowerment. One of the conclusions I have come to about my own privilege

has been that the best way to use it, is to allow others to speak up, and give them the space to do

so. I have learned to think more critically about how I am able to make an impact and why that

impact matters. I spoke about in one of my blog posts that being “nice” is not enough and now,

after the context of this course, I understand why. Having a voice is a powerful tool, especially if

it used to introduce other voices to the conversation. I used to think that education was the

answer, and I still do. Equitable access to education is a goal I will always be involved with, but

equitable access to an education centered around a culture of care is what I will advocate for. I

already have started to but will continue to have conversations comparing values instead of
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decisions. I have conversations that are rooted in deeper questions of access and how to expand

it. I align myself with individuals who seek to solve and talk and argue about the same problems

that I do. I see every individual as having a right to their own values and the right to express

these values in the medium in which they so choose, for having a value in itself demonstrates this

common thread we all share- that we all seem to value something. We all care enough to put

forth some of our existence into one part of our lives that it forces us to be vulnerable to our

authentic selves. Maybe this is the common variable. And while I might not go to sleep thinking

that the system is perfect and that privilege is equally distributed, at least I am able to, before the

8 or so hours I rest my being, to put forth energy dedicated on how to fix it, because this has

become something I wish to continue to value for the rest of my life.

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Works Cited

Burton, C. Emory, and Sanford F. Schram, “After Welfare: The Culture of Postindustrial Social

Policy.” Contemporary Sociology, vol. 30, no. 3, 2001, p.280., doi:10.2307/3089272.

Demirel, Sinan. “Seattle’s 30-Year Fight to End Homelessness.” Crosscut, 20 Sept. 2016,

features.crosscut.com/the-30-year-fight-to-end-homelessness-in-seattle.

Manza, Jeff, and Michael Sauder. Inequality and Society: Social Science Perspectives on Social

Stratification. Norton, 2009.

Marshall, T H. Citizenship and Social Class: And Other Essays. Cambridge [England: University

Press, 1950. Print.