At Boston College’s Chestnut Hill campus, students tend to isolate themselves from surrounding community and the city of Boston. Unlike the schools downtown, students at BC can, if they wish, earn a degree without ever traveling into Boston, interacting solely with young adults of a similar socioeconomic background. College is one of the only times in our lives when we will live and interact with people of almost only the same age group, and PULSE is working to shatter that notion.
Each year, approximately 360 students enroll in the 14 sections of the PULSE core course (Person and Social Responsibility), which acts to fulfill BC’s philosophy and theology requirements by combining coursework, reflection and discussion with 12 hours a week of community service at a variety of social service sites. The program is built on the belief that students will better appreciate the issues that contribute to social inequality when they witness the suffering firsthand of those on society’s margins.
As a student in the PULSE program, I underwent several weeks of searching before being accepted as a volunteer for Little Brothers Friends of the Elderly, one of six students from BC. After a day of introductory work in the LBFE office, I was able to meet with my elders, Norma and Bernice, for the first time.
Now, I head to Jamaica Plain twice a week to visit with Norma and Bernice at their respective homes. I am beginning to better understand Little Brothers’ mission, and the mission of PULSE, as I slowly get to know my elders as people, and as friends.
PULSE and LBFE both seek to aid the marginalized populations in the Boston area, but they do it in a way that other organizations might find unconventional. Instead of just providing people material and physical support, they grant them kindness and care through human-to-human interactions.
I know I am going to love working with Little Brothers because they place emotional fulfillment at the same level as physical wellbeing. By connecting with Norma and Bernice as people, I can make myself more involved in the community outside of Boston College, and shatter the social homogeneity that I might experience if I kept myself confined to the BC campus for my college career.