As my senior year starts and I begin my second year as a Resident Assistant in my former residence hall (Xavier Residence Hall), I am finding myself reminiscing about my experience during my time as a freshman and living in Xavier.
I found myself in Xavier and living with a particular group of students who had not only the same interest in Cabrini that I did, but the same drive be an active part of the social justice mission of the University.
This was through the Living, Learning Community (LLC) called Voices of Justice. The community was close in the sense that it allowed the students to live together, go to class together, as well as go on a trip to Washington D.C. as a community that September.
Living together as a cohort of 17 students had its ups and downs, but my favorite part was that if there was ever a question or concern about a topic in one of the various classes together, I could ask my roommate, or walk down the hall and ask anyone of my classmates. It also allowed for us to connect with other students in majors that we may not have met or interacted with, even though we held the common interest of being voices of justice (cheesy, I know!).
It is also an easy way to adjust to college and become more involved on campus right from the start. As I look back as a senior, and prepare for what is now the 13th cohort of students in the Living, Learning Community, I am surprised at how much I loved being in something as unique as this program is and how great it is going to be for the first-year students to experience the close-knit community that Voices of Justice is.
The various LLCs go on different trips throughout the year, but the best one (bias aside) is definitely the Voices of Justice’s trip to Washington D.C., as it allows the students to see the United States’ capital as well as learn about history and why monuments such as the Lincoln Memorial, the World War II Memorial, and the Holocaust Museum exist and how they all connect to injustices, and how they were corrected. The trip had a huge impact on me that I still think about it to this day. It allowed for the students to find a perspective that we may not have found just by sitting in the classroom.
I also loved during the second semester of the year, watching "Orange Is the New Black" and writing about how it shows injustices and analyzing how the Netflix original told stories of women who are flawed being stuck in an equally flawed system as well as how we, as students, could help fix something so flawed.