Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Argerey Stapakis
Honors 231C
Final Paper
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
express his or her values, while choosing to align with those who promise the execution of these
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
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
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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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
Works Cited
Burton, C. Emory, and Sanford F. Schram, “After Welfare: The Culture of Postindustrial Social
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
Marshall, T H. Citizenship and Social Class: And Other Essays. Cambridge [England: University