Doing bigger and better things

Confession One: I’m not sure if this makes me an egomaniac or just a glutton for punishment, but I do read what online commenters say about my columns on The Daily Tar Heel’s website. Confession Two: I read a lot of Nancy Drew at a very young and impressionable age.

So naturally, when I read a comment on my first column this semester that said, “I challenge you to drive to Creswell, N.C. and solve the mystery of what happened there,” my interest was piqued.

This Spring Break, when my roommate and I were heading back to Chapel Hill from a trip to the Outer Banks, we passed signs for Creswell. I couldn’t resist.

Going through Creswell is a little like going back in time. The buildings that line Main Street were built in the late 1800s, and the wear and tear on them shows. Most of them are vacant and look like they’ve been that way for a while. Put simply, there’s not a whole lot going on there.

Creswell has a population of 276. That’s all. If the whole town came to spend night on our campus they would only fill up a few floors of HoJo.

The median per capita income in Creswell is $11,908. To put that in perspective, tuition, fees, room and board for an in-state student at UNC totals $16,478. No wonder only 8 percent of residents of Creswell have a bachelor’s degree or higher.

Finally, 59 percent of Creswell’s children are living below the poverty line.

For whatever reason, that’s what sticks out to me most about Creswell and other towns like it. There are so many organizations on this campus that work with disadvantaged kids in Orange and Durham counties.

These counties have 15 percent and 23 percent child poverty rates respectively, two world-class universities, and thousands of idealistic young people looking to save the world.

Despite all this, sometimes even the work to be done here in our community can seem overwhelming. Can you imagine the work to be done in a place like Creswell, which has none of these resources the Triangle’s universities offer, and where almost 60 percent of the kids are living in poverty?

Now don’t get me wrong — we need to do outreach to Orange County and Durham County. These programs are incredible, and they demonstrate students’ commitment to being good citizens and stewards of this area we’ve grown to love.

But we also need to be good citizens and good stewards of this state, whose residents pay the taxes to help pay for the excellent education we’re receiving here at UNC.

Distance should not be an excuse. I have friends at UNC whose service organizations partner with grassroots health groups in Uganda, support sustainable development projects in India, take service trips to Honduras and work with students in South Africa’s impoverished townships.

But with the exception of a few friends who have gone on APPLES trips, I don’t know anyone at UNC who is a member of a campus organization that works with an N.C. community outside of a 100-mile radius of Chapel Hill.

Maybe I just need to expand my circle of friends, but shouldn’t this be more common?

Why aren’t we working with low-income high schoolers in the mountains? Why aren’t we tackling the health issues in Eastern North Carolina? Why don’t we have a microfinance initiative in Creswell?