The students had to jump through some hoops to be considered for the program: plan their own trip itineraries; make living and travel arrangements; calculate the trip’s cost; get faculty approval; and persuade their parents before they could even apply to the Dean of the college for the internship provided for them by Michael Dill, Wabash Class of 1971 and a native of Williamsport, Indiana.
They also had to promise to write a comprehensive essay upon their return to campus in the fall.
Near the end of this past school year it was my happy task to interview several of them for an article in Wabash Magazine. Into my office they filed, one at a time for about two weeks, taking time away from studying for finals. Poised at the brink of one of life’s hurdles, graduation from college, they took time to tell me, with great enthusiasm, about the lessons of the previous summer.
Experience is the best teacher. These young men proved it again. As the stories poured out of them, I understood more clearly the value of seeing first-hand, learning first-hand, and doing first-hand whatever interests you. These young men are fortunate to be taught in the classroom by excellent Wabash professors who care about them. The professors want the young men to learn and grow, and do their best to make that happen, but there is still nothing quite like personal experience to make the knowledge part of you.
Wabash students, like millions before them, read The Odyssey, Homer’s classic story of the heroic Odysseus journeying home after the Trojan War. Bryan Gonzalez from Fishers, Indiana, had a much deeper understanding of man’s struggle against pride and temptation after he was able to see Odysseus’s route during his summer study in Greece.
After spending time considering the way we humans face life’s moral pitfalls, Bryan spent the rest of the summer in the midst two settings in the sharpest moral contrast: a Benedictine monastery in Italy, where worked and studied the discipline and grace of the monks’ daily life; and Berlin, Germany, where he worked at a professional depiction of horrors of the Nazi and Gestapo atrocities committed during WWII.
There were also two Wabash students who have been studying the Mexican migration to Crawfordsville. The young men interviewed local Crawfordsville residents who had come from Mexico, then retraced the trip of one lady who came all the way here by bus.
Melecio Gonzalez and Ben Tooley , from southern Texas and northern Indiana respectively, met with Mexican relatives of the new Crawfordsville residents, and spent time with border guards from the Immigration and Naturalization Service, as well as members of groups that set up water facilities for the illegal aliens who are crossing the borders. What a learning experience!
It is one thing to talk in the abstract about immigration policy, but quite another to meet people who want to be in the United States to earn a living wage to keep their families healthy and safe. It is still quite another to talk with men and women whose job it is to uphold the law and keep illegal aliens out of our country. And certainly still another thing to talk with the men and women who provide a cup of water to people so desperate to come to this country that they cross the desert border at great risk of arrest or death.
No political issue will ever look the same to those young men because, having seen one first-hand, they understand that sweeping government policies ultimately come down to individual human beings.
The experiences of Dill Interns in the summer of 2002 could fill this newspaper, so it has been necessary to tell you just a little about the adventures of three of the fifteen. Right now, thanks to the extraordinary generosity of Mr. Dill, there are 15 other Wabash students scattered around the world, looking and learning, gaining in understanding as taught by that wonderful teacher—experience. I can hardly wait to hear their stories.
Susan Cantrell is director of campaign communications at Wabash College.