Civility Week

Civility Week Community Agreement

We come together during Civility Week to enhance our understanding of, and learn more about, the meaning and importance of civility. We commit to honest, brave, respectful conversation, where participants are encouraged to speak openly, listen actively, embrace curiosity and gather wisdom. Together, we will strive to:

Learn and grow

Listen and understand

Recognize that experiences are perceived

Acknowledge where power and privilege exist; and

Provide space for all voices to share

Civility Statement

“Brookdale Community College is committed to freedom of expression while maintaining a civil and ethical learning environment. We believe that a community composed of people with diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and abilities promotes learning and engagement. We are responsible for treating one another with respect and kindness regardless of our differences.”

Civility Week Fall 2024 Request for Proposals Form 

Civility Week Fall 2024

Understanding Poverty and New Directions at Brookdale

October 7 -11, 2024

In Partnership with: The Wellness Center and the Center for Transformative Learning

Attend Brookdale’s Fall 2024 Civility Week events to grow your understanding of poverty – a socioeconomic status held by nearly 38 million Americans today – and learn about ways to best serve Brookdale students who face poverty.

To begin, you are invited to participate in Civility Week’s kickoff event:

Cost of Poverty Experience (COPE): College Edition

This COPE event is a 2.5-hour simulation that will lead you to explore the experience of poverty through the eyes of real college students. Participation will engender empathy, catalyze important discussion, and empower you to respond to issues of poverty and Brookdale students who face poverty with care, compassion, and competency.

There are two options for participation on the Lincroft Campus, space is limited and requires advanced registration.

Friday, October 4 at 9:30 a.m. REGISTER HERE
Monday, October 7 at 1:00 p.m.  REGISTER HERE

About COPE

COPE Event Overview: The Cost of Poverty Experience (COPE): College Edition at Brookdale Community College

Brookdale Community College invites all employees, including faculty, staff, and administrators, to join “The Cost of Poverty Experience (COPE): College Edition,” an impactful and essential event addressing the experience of poverty for today’s college student. This immersive experience prompts participants to embody the daily struggles and visceral realities faced by college students living in poverty. Once experienced, you can’t unknow it. The goal is to drive empathy into action. By fostering understanding and solidarity, the event aims to embolden college employees to craft and execute new plans, practices, and policies to support students who struggle with poverty (e.g., establish an Emergency Relief Fund for students who encounter emergencies (e.g., job loss, unexpected medical bills, etc.); remove registration holds for students who carry a tuition balance; provide ride share cards to students in fieldwork; create paid mentorships for students in career programs, employ poverty informed teaching practices, etc.).

Understanding the Struggle

Many of us are in this struggle. 38 million Americans live “under the poverty line” and many millions more feel the weight of financial burden every day. In the face of rising inflation, the grocery store check-out, the cost of childcare, an impossible housing market, and the historic inequities of capitalism, the cost of living continues to escalate, disproportionately affecting the working class – yet affecting nearly all groups to differing degrees. Today, 59% to 62% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck; they are only one paycheck away from potential homelessness. The average cost of an emergency plunging a family into deprivation is just $400. The “True Poverty Level” in New Jersey, as reported by Legal Services of New Jersey’s Poverty Research Institute, was $72,000 for a family of three in 2021 and has only worsened by 2024. This means that many hard-working people, with seemingly decent salaries, still struggle financially.

Children, Poverty, and the Failure of the Grown-ups

Poverty has a devastating impact on children, affecting their education, health, and general wellbeing. As of 2023, 11.6 million children, or 16% of all U.S. children, live in poverty. These children are more likely to experience food insecurity, with 1 in 6 lacking access to enough food. You cannot learn if you are hungry; thus, education is severely impacted. Students from low-income families are five times more likely to drop out of high school than their more affluent peers. Additionally, health outcomes are dire for children living in poverty, with a staggering 60% more likely to suffer from mental health issues such as depression and anxiety. Children do not have control over their life and the policy that informs it. Children lack power because they do not have the ability to organize. But adults can. NYU Business School Professor Scott Galloway asks, “Do we care about our children?” According to current social and economic policies, and their associated outcomes, the answer is up for debate.

The Social Determinants of Health

The “social determinants of health” includes the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live, and age. Examples of these determinants impacting college students include food insecurity, inadequate housing, and lack of access to healthcare. Understanding these factors is critical to addressing the root causes of poverty and related physical and mental health outcomes and is essential to developing effective solutions. In other words, poverty is a public health issue that must be addressed via a comprehensive understanding of its etiology and the utilization of an upstream approach.

The Criminalization of Poverty

Society often criminalizes poverty, imposing legal penalties on those who are unable to afford basic needs or fail to meet financial obligations. For college students, this may mean facing legal consequences due to unpaid bills or incurring fines that lead to increased stress and barriers to academic success. Criminalizing poverty perpetuates the cycle of disadvantage and makes it harder for individuals to escape poverty. “Fight poverty. Not the Poor,” is a slogan born of this trend.

The Importance of Solidarity

Before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, he was in the process of planning the largest multi-racial, intergenerational coalition the world has ever seen: The Poor People’s March on Washington. He did not live to see it. In the same spirit, especially during a time when polarization and separateness is at a fever pitch in our country, COPE harkens the solidarity that Dr. King envisioned. At Brookdale, we can be truly united against poverty to best serve our students. A concerted, collegewide effort to effect change for students who face poverty at Brookdale, a leader among community colleges, has never been more timely or more necessary.

Why This Matters

If systems are designed, they can be redesigned. COPE brings Brookdale employees together to mark the College’s commitment to understanding and supporting students in poverty. By participating in the learning experience as a whole community, we can make this event truly impactful by first understanding the far-reaching effects of poverty then taking actionable steps to support students in ways and to an extent that Brookdale has never done before. Be there to be a part of something revolutionary!

Why COPE, Poverty, and Civility Week?

COPE is an immersive experience, created by people with lived experience in poverty. The “college edition” provides a foundational understanding of poverty and its many tentacles, as experienced by many college students every day. In this way, COPE fosters empathy and encourages meaningful conversation about social justice, equity, and the importance of creating an inclusive community at Brookdale. It promotes civil discourse and thus serves as a building block to creating a more compassionate, informed, and proactive campus community.

Topics to be addressed may include:

• The history of class structure in the United States
• Racial capitalism
• Global perspectives of class and social strata
• The American Dream and (the myth of) meritocracy
• Financial literacy and resilience
• The promise of education and social mobility
• Poor people voting against their interests
• Solutions, safety nets, and ways forward

Questions to be explored may include:

• What are the historical, sociological, and economic causes and effects of poverty in the United States and other countries?
• From a human rights perspective, how can the right to an adequate standard of living, free from poverty, be achieved here and around the world?
• How does poverty impact the wellbeing and future of America’s children?
• What can be done to increase the economic security for America’s children and families?
• What is the role of education in leading to future successes and prosperity?
• If a strong democracy is constituted by an educated citizenry, how can we assess calls for expansion of educational rights, such as universal preschool?
• In view of the climate crisis, how are communities most affected by poverty tend to also be affected by environmental harms, such as pollution, a lack of drinkable water, and extreme temperatures?
• What are the relationships linking immigration to economic conditions?
• In the past and present, how has poverty been (mis)represented in various forms of media, from films and TV series, to literature, art, and music?
• What do authentic representations of poverty look like, and how could they lead to action?
• What are the psychological and health impacts of experiences of poverty?
• What have been successful policy strategies and movements that have redressed the effects of poverty for college students, in particular?
• What can be done at Brookdale to make supporting students in poverty a core value of the college?

The Civility Research Guide created by Theresa Agostinelli provides links to books, articles, websites, videos, and databases related to civility. The LibGuide supports presentation topics and Open Conversation events. LINK to Civility Week LibGuide.

Civility Week is Sponsored by the Brookdale Foundation

Michele McBride, 90.5 the night, talks with Dr. Ave Latte discussing Brookdale’s Civility Week