FYS 198-2 Trip to Washington DC

“Homelessness” is a term that conjures up unsavory images in the popular imagination, flat, generic, clichés that owe as much to fear as to fact. The truth is that children account for a shocking proportion of the homeless in America today, as do women fleeing abuse, as do the working poor, many of whom find it impossible to secure affordable housing in many of our
cities. If working men and women and school-attending children number among the homeless, why do the stereotypes of the pushy panhandler and the drunken skid-row bum continue to dominate our collective vision of homelessness? Why does this population continue to grow? What can be done to alleviate the circumstances surrounding homelessness in America? Should we act? Should we care?

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Course Design

This course is intentionally designed to combine traditional academic learning, engaged service opportunities, informed personal activism, and highly localized advocacy, thus aligning the course around academic content that informs and enhances individual opportunities for student action, advocacy, and activism concerning homelessness, hunger, and poverty.