Without a doubt, students involved in community service do not and cannot understand the lives and backgrounds of the underprivileged youth they seek to help. However, one is not born with an understanding of those different from yourself, nor is it something that one learns in a classroom, even at a fine academic institution such as Penn. Instead, this understanding is something that can only come through interaction. It is something that must slowly evolve between individuals who have decided it is an important goal to seek. These sorority women cannot "drop by for dinner" at random homes in West Philadelphia in an attempt to see, first hand, what life is like. However, what they can do is start cultivating a relationship in some small way, such as walking local children around Penn's campus. Even a seemingly trivial act such as this one will eventually lead to the conversations from which both the children and the students have so much to learn. LIRON GITIG Wharton '93
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