Religious Studies students trade traditional coursework for community internships
by Caroline Nash ’22, Staff Writer
Students in College Chaplain Jeff McArn’s class, “American Freedom and Religious Thought,” do not simply read or head to the library to prepare for discussions as many other classes do. Instead, each week, McArn sends the students in his class off-campus to intern for community service organizations in the greater Clinton area. Through this experience, the students say they have gained exposure to the many social and economic challenges facing people in the United States, and have begun to understand how the day-to-day living experience of many Americans connects to broader issues of inequality.
Libby Militello ’22 says she registered for McArn’s class because it sounded interesting to her. Militello has spent this semester working with a partner at the food pantry in the Johnson Park Center as a part of McArn’s class. Militello describes her family as not particularly religious, but she has enjoyed the opportunity to find connections between religion, history, and contemporary American issues through the class and internship.
“I feel that participating in these internships has shown me obstacles to American freedom beyond the glaringly obvious — there are so many little things that make up an individual’s ability to live their life on their own terms,” said Militello.
“American Freedom is about as broad and vague as you can get, and yet central to an American value system,” explains McArn. He says the internship program “gives us the opportunity to consider the element of poverty as a factor in thinking about the opportunities and challenges of freedom in our society.”
McArn is committed to learning through experience and sees value in “getting out of the proverbial bubble, as a reminder that life goes on in diverse struggles and different ways than the culture we settle into all too easily on the Hill.”
The organizations affiliated with the class are all led by people McArn has known for many years, through his work as chaplain and through the COOP’s Service Internship Program. He believes his students’ work with these social service organizations helps to forge stronger bonds between Hamilton students and the surrounding community.
“In many cases, students feel the desire and, in some cases, the follow-through, to continue working with the work and the people they have become a part of,” said McArn. In addition to the food pantry, students are assigned to soup kitchens, refugee centers, and emergency shelters, all based in Utica.
The benefit for the first-year students taking the class this semester is not only the chance to engage with the community right at the beginning of college, but also to partner with another first-year student at the same time. “I think this is a pretty unique and helpful way to get to know new people, especially since this is a first-year course,” said Militello.
Students in the class say they find the internship commitment manage- able with classes and extracurricular activities because it is just two hours a week with college-arranged transportation, either by Uber or the Jitney. Still, Militello says “[the time commitment] is [...] often enough that we really get to understand the work done at our respective organizations and form relationships with the workers at our sites.” Students in the class have been keeping journals of their internship experiences and will present their reflections at a final class breakfast meeting scheduled for Dec. 6. Representatives of the community organizations also attend the breakfast and share their own thoughts about the partnership. Militello recommends the class to other students, and McArn says he is committed to teaching it in both the fall and spring semesters each year. The class is reserved for first-year students in the fall, but is open to all Hamilton students in the spring.
