Column: How I spent my Saturday

Recently I had the pleasure of seeing the Durham most students don't get to see over their undergraduate careers at Duke. I'm talking about the Durham neighborhoods where the mean income is scores below the national average, where houses are falling apart and dilapidated cars sit on the street. I'm talking about the Durham just a few miles from the stone walls of the Gothic Wonderland, that seems worlds apart in terms of appearance. You may be able to get a degree with honors and get a plush Wall Street job after Duke, but if you never ever see the Durham with abandoned houses and little kids spending their Saturday without their parents, you might as well have done nothing during your four years here.

I had the pleasure of participating in a voter registration drive that Saturday and going door to door asking people if they were registered. Let's just say it was an extremely interesting afternoon I will not long forget. As the people I was with and I marched idealistically from house to house, we saw things we never saw growing up being from another socioeconomic level.

Some people who answered the door appeared to have many teeth missing and other health problems. We stopped at one house where a pre-kindergartner told us her parents were not at home and she was alone. We encountered one very nice eight year-old who was happy to recite to us the names of his eight younger siblings who lived in various areas across the country. On the sidewalk I saw an old man stumble by around noon clearly drunk and holding a forty in a brown paper bag. One old lady who invited us into her house did not seem as interested in voting as she was in just having someone to talk to. Then there was one person who just had to stop us and ask what we were doing in this neighborhood since it was obvious from our appearance we weren't from around there. On a good note, I discovered many in these meager places were registered to vote and we managed to register some people.

The most interesting moment came when one man answered and my colleague went into her usual pitch asking if he was registered to vote.

"Why should I vote? Look around you, it doesn't matter who is in office, things ain't gonna change around here. Elections are all about money and whoever has it can win it no matter what. What's in it for me and the folks here? Look, I don't hate the government or what ya'll are doin, but there are better ways I can spend my time. I pay my taxes and right now I'm networking and getting folks together to make things better ourselves."

I hate to say it but he had a point. I imagine Johnson's Great Society nor Reagan's tough love policies hadn't really changed much around this area over the years. The only way real change and improvement could ever come about was not by some policy maker but by people actually starting to care about the little old lady who just wanted company or the disenchanted American who was just trying to get by. Meanwhile we sit in our dorms and plan out law school applications to Harvard and Yale.

Right now I would like to go into a long diatribe about the merits of community service, but honestly that would feel too condescending on my part right now. I just think there's a world out there not far from Duke many students aren't aware of. Despite the many out there who do go out into Durham and do valuable work, there are many out there who worry solely about their resumes and monkeys who can move robots with their minds (although I do love that monkey). Furthermore, I did realize that afternoon that true change can not come from political work or writing checks from your law firm desk, but from actual hands-on involvement. Okay, long condescending diatribe over.

The day I went out into Durham was the day of the Georgia Tech football game. And while I was a tad perturbed--ummm, that's a bit of an understatement--I was pissed off I missed the drunken debauchery that occurred as my comrades stormed the field participating in the holiest of holy college football traditions that is tearing down the goal posts. Anyway, I realized the benefits of the lessons learned out there in Durham outweighed the utilities of ripping down a yellow piece of metal and placing it in the hand of a stone statue of a tobacco farmer. Although I'm more than pissed off I missed both the Tech game and last year's East Carolina game. So, football team, can you please beat Florida State or Miami or Virginia Tech over the next two years at home so I can finally taste some sweet, sweet crossbar? Please? Pretty please)

Jonathon Pattillo is a Trinity sophomore. His column usually appears every third Tuesday.