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December 19 , 2001:
LETTER FROM WASHINGTON
One day, one class
On December 1, The Class of 2001 dedicated themselves to service

By Alex Rawson '01

"Princeton in the nation's service, and in the service of all nations." So goes the one mantra heard over and over again by Princeton undergraduates — a mantra that is too often mocked by students for its idealistically imprecise ambition. The truth is that to most undergraduates, for whom the idea of concretely serving the nation reaches far beyond the scope of their individual experience, the notion of serving the nation as a class, let alone as a university, is too intangible to resonate.

Less than a year after graduation, however, with classmates scattered across the globe having an impact on their communities in different ways every day, the notion of collective service becomes more and more palpable all the time. And on December 1, members of the Class of 2001 around the country joined in a national day of community service to exercise for the first time our ability to serve broadly. That Saturday, each U.S. city that is now home to a large number of class members played host to a class community service effort — so that on that day Princetonians in Washington, Chicago, Boston, and New York were simultaneously giving back to their communities.

The effort was the brainchild of Teddy Nemeroff, our class community service chair, who, together with the rest of the class officers, thought that a national service day would be a great way to build class unity and get us all thinking about meaningful service despite our scattered locations. A few calls and a flurry of e-mails later, classmates in New York were working to help the city's homeless, classmates in Chicago were entertaining needy children at the zoo, those in Boston were busily scooping out more than 700 servings of pudding for shut-in AIDS patients, and '01ers in Washington found themselves furiously painting a homeless support center in southeast D.C. On the whole, this left more than 60 alumni working around the country to effect change. For perhaps the first time, our class was having impact over a terrain larger and on a scale grander than any one of us could achieve individually. "We all enjoyed it. It was a nice chance for people to get together", Nemeroff explains, "and it was a great opportunity for people to start thinking about class service on a broader level."

In Washington, 15 of us donned our shoddiest work clothes to paint the inside of the Capital Hill Group Ministry Hospitality Center in Southeast D.C. The center is a multifaith day-home for the temporarily homeless — those who are between homes, but for the time being have no place to live. The center provides resources to help adults locate new homes and, where applicable, new jobs, and it provides families with a safe haven for their kids during the day. And for a center that does so much work on a daily basis with already limited resources, applying a badly needed fresh coat of paint is rightly not high on the priority list. That's where we came in. Experienced painters? Not a one. But armed with rollers, brushes, and the sheer desire to finish the task — and under the watchful eye of the Rev. Emily Guthrie '85, the center's acting director — we finished a job that the center would perhaps otherwise have struggled to complete. That left those who staff the center on a daily basis time to do the work that really matters — and work which none of the painters could really have done — helping some of D.C.'s homeless to find themselves new places to live and work.

That we were working with another Princetonian was sheer coincidence. "Finding Emily," says Kit Cutler '01, organizer of the D.C. effort, "was just dumb luck." Kit simply began calling D.C. nonprofits in an effort to find an interesting project, and Emily was the only person he spoke with who was resourceful enough to find a way to use volunteers. Only later did he learn that she, too, was a Princetonian. There is, however, a certain harmony in the fact that our class's effort in D.C. brought us together with an older alumna. That consonance of Princetonian efforts underscores what for me was the lesson of the day — there is real power in the combined efforts of Princetonians across the country, and with a little organizing, that power can be easily tapped. Our class efforts on December 1 had significant impact, not only on the facilities we served across the country, but also, at least for me, on my vision of what Princetonians working together can achieve. That lesson brings new meaning to the old mantra, and it makes the notion of "Princeton in the nation's service" suddenly concrete — and suddenly far more meaningful. And at least for the class of '01, says Nemeroff, "this is only the beginning."

You can reach Alex at ahrawson@yahoo.com