By Jack Willingham, ’13, Contributor

On Wednesday Jan. 27, Upper School students attended Multicultural Morning, a half-day assembly which this year focused on debunking the stereotypes of homelessness.

“[Director of Service Learning] Ms. Floyd, being in charge of service, and I, being in charge of diversity-related topics, wanted to combine those two topics,” said Director of Student and Multicultural Life Scott Dillingham.

With this concept in mind, the topic of homelessness seemed a good one to tie the gain of knowledge in with generating ideas of how to aide a local and global issue.

The morning consisted of a showing of the movie The Soloist, based on the story of Steve Lopez, a Los Angeles Times journalist, who happens upon a homeless man playing a two stringed violin in the streets. After extensive investigation, Lopez learns the story behind the man, named Nathaniel Ayers, and the factors from his life that led him into homelessness. This part of the movie, which tells about Ayers’ past as a brightly talented youth playing the cello through family struggles, helps to dispel the common stereotype of the homeless man being an addict bum with no interests.

Senior Brian Cofer demonstrated that this lesson needed to be taught, saying “I had obviously heard all of the standard homeless stereotypes like ‘lazy bum’ or ‘he’ll just use my money to buy drugs and booze’. However, I think the [other] causes of homelessness…often go overlooked.”

The movie also teaches the important lesson that the state of homelessness can happen to anyone, and anyone has a story behind how they came into this situation. The later part of the movie deals with Lopez’s inner conflict between being a friend to Ayers and getting him involuntary medical treatment—which Lopez thinks would help Ayers greatly—that would possibly cause him to lose Nathaniel’s trust.

Freshman Caroline Gentile said that, “by opening [her] eyes to the hardships involved in homelessness and the great efforts by a man to help in this problem, the movie inspired [her] to consider taking action in [her] own community.”

The last part of the morning consisted of a session with the Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless, an organization aimed at eradicating homelessness through political and rights-related advocacy, coordinating with other organizations to get services to the homeless and spreading awareness of the issue. The Coalition sent a representative to give students a lecture on the details about misconceptions of homelessness and help to give students a grasp on the idea of the fact that this could happen to anybody, not just the stereotypical “lazy bum”. As well as the representative, the Coalition sent Grady, a man with firsthand experience with homelessness.

Grady, a member of the Speakers Bureau—a subgroup of the Coalition that sends homeless and formerly homeless people to speak with faith related groups and schools about their experiences—told students about his former life as a drug user and homeless man.

Sophomore Emmett Gladden said “He [Grady] taught me that not everybody that is homeless is crazy, some people are perfectly rational… some people just choose to be homeless, but some people don’t have a choice, and it’s not right to treat them any differently than we treat people that aren’t homeless.” Emmett expressed the message taught by Grady that each person is under unique conditions, and that labeling all homeless people under one concept would be impossible and, moreover, irresponsible.

However, on the question as to whether the Coalition’s overall process of teaching was effective, Cofer said “The woman from the Homeless Coalition was very negative and seemed very accusatory and condescending towards our student body; I thought that there could have a much more compelling way to relay the Homeless Coalition’s program and their goals.”

Overall, Cincinnati Country Day used both the visual presentation and the speaking session combined to try to make an impact on students. When asked what the goals of the day were, Mr. Dillingham said “Just to bring awareness to this topic. It [the topic of homelessness] is not talked about as often as others, so we wanted to bring light to it.”

With this goal in mind, did the school do an effective job of achieving its purpose?

“I don’t think I could have learned it [the lessons taught of homelessness] better anywhere else, except if I were actually homeless,” Gladden said.

However, Cofer thought the presentation was not as effective at debunking myths. “It didn’t so much break down stereotypes so much as it raised awareness about helping homeless people with problems beyond their own control or motivation.”

No matter what the view on stereotypes, though, the Multicultural Morning proposed an important message of awareness to students and left them with more appreciation and knowledge on an otherwise less-known topic.

Photo courtesy of bobritzema.wordpress.com.