"What's on your mind tonight?" the old man asked softly as I entered. He always got right to the point. The fireplace crackled, warming the room.
Taking off my coat, I sat down across from him. "I want to save the world."
"Don't say that. People won't take you seriously."
"But I do," I said. "I just don't know where to start."
"What do you see other Brown students doing?"
"Well, there are butt-loads of affinity and activist groups," I said, remembering the student activity fair. "There's HKSA, CSA, KAMP/KSEA, KASA, AASA, SASA, SOCA, TSA, VSA, TWA, SOFA, SLA, CVSA, NAB, SAWC, BARC, BUAD, NSBE, WISE, SWE, YCL,BEAN, TIKKUN, BRIO, LASO, NSP, OUAP, FEP, BOMBS, BMES, BTS, UCS, RUQUS, SFTT, TNT, ACLU, BSU, and BSY."
The old man laughed. "Yes, Brown students love to start groups. They're independent like that."
"Why are there so many?" I asked. "Besides our love of acronyms, I mean."
"The people who start these groups often just want to be in charge of something."
"Is that why a lot of groups fail?"
"That's a good question. Do they tend to fail in the same way?"
"Yeah. Now that I think about it, they do," I replied. "We're enthusiastic and have lots of good causes. But then we run out of steam. The organizing is way more difficult than we think it will be, and so we burn ourselves out."
"Or the leaders graduate and there's no one to keep it going," the old man added.
"But we've had some successful groups, too." I said defensively. "I know that the Brown Environmental Action Network got Brown to renegotiate its office supplies contract with Boise Cascade so that the company would stop logging old-growth forests. I think other colleges were doing the same thing at the time."
"Good. What else?"
"Remember David Horowitz, who came to speak at Brown last year? He's showed conservatives at hundreds of campuses how to start gadfly groups devoted to issues of intellectual diversity."
"And those are just recent efforts," the old man continued. "Back in the 1980s, there were protests against Brown's investment in companies working with the South African apartheid government. Jimmy Carter's daughter Amy withdrew from Brown in '87 because of her involvement with that campaign." The old man paused, smiling. "Jimmy's rather proud of that."
He continued, "And during the 1990's, the Young Communist League was another good example, always training new leaders to keep things going. With support from its national organization, the League worked with other groups on successful endeavors like need-blind admissions and the living wage campaign."
"I'm starting to notice a theme," I said. "These examples of success all seem to be part of national efforts. Brown students are the local players."
"Why do you think that is?" he asked.
"Well, lots of Brown groups struggle because their members are around only for a few years at a time. Being part of a bigger whole probably helps pass on the knowledge-"
"Institutional memory," the old man interrupted.
"Exactly. So that each new leader doesn't start from scratch without any records of past group efforts."
"Very good. What else?" he asked. I stared blankly at him, unsure. He added, "When idealistic Brown students walk into the SAO to start an activist group, what are they missing?"
"Their MCM class?"
"No. Structure. Form. Organization skills. The kinds of things being taught at the Grassroots Organizing Weekend in a couple of weeks. Organizing students while being a student yourself is incredibly complex." The old man paused. "Everyone's first idea is to protest on the main green. But then only 20 people show up, the megaphone is broken, and the energy is wasted."
"But I love Brown exactly because we care so much. What's wrong with being driven by a little idealism?"
"The fatal flaw of idealism is its lack of specifics. There's no nuance in it."
The old man was right. I wanted to fix it all: racial profiling and rising tuition, homophobia and attacks on affirmative action, pro-life policies and really small Ratty cups. I had a lot of concerns, but I didn't know much about the details.
He studied me for a few moments. "You seem like you're thinking about something," he said.
"Well, if I were going to start something at Brown - hypothetically, of course - I'd wonder what kind of effort Brown would be best at starting. Something we could develop and expand nationwide if it were successful." I paused. "Do you have any ideas?"
The old man didn't answer right away. Finally he spoke, more quietly now. "I do have one idea for you," the old man said. "But I warn you: it's rather complicated."
"Nuance. I got it," I grinned. "Bring it on."
"Two years ago, the Health Reform Program at the Boston University School of Public Health studied Rhode Island's expensive health-care system. The study found that transforming it into a 'single payer' system would cut administrative costs in half, saving enough money to provide for everyone's needs. Eliminating the need to decide who is eligible would save more than enough to make everyone eligible."
"Statewide health care? And you think Brown students should pursue this cause?"
"To work with the organizations in the state already involved in this, yes. If there's any state in America small enough to prove this model, it's Rhode Island. And if there's any college here whose students and faculty could make it happen, it's Brown."
Andrew K. Stein '06 is in your big lecture class.
