CAMPUS ALMANAC

A Voice for the Voiceless

Achieving Social Justice is the Goal of the Oscar Romero Center for Faith in Action

by Kelly Phillips

Still in its infancy, the Oscar Romero Center for Faith in Action is new enough that it’s even now being defined. Nonetheless, the center has quickly become a place where students feel at home hanging out and making plans to make the world a better place.

Founder Scott Drain, who’s been with University Ministry for four years, has clearly poured his heart and soul into the undertaking, but he’s quick to credit the students.

“The reality is, I could be sitting here by myself. They’ve energized me, and (they) are going to be the ones to change the campus and the world.” He gives a quick, hearty laugh. “I tell the students that I expect them to change the world. I don’t feel like that’s too much to ask of them.”

While the center is a small box of a room in Maher Hall, its goal is huge: to make sure that USD lives up to the social justice component of its Catholic identity. Drain and the students he works with plan to make that happen by creating a center that promotes awareness of social issues and offers students immersion experiences like Spring Break service trips to Tijuana and San Francisco. The center also encourages prayerful reflection and a commitment to create and live in a more just and humane world.

At least in part, this project is Drain’s baby. He spent a year just thinking and dreaming and hoping about what it could be. He crafted a six-page credo laying out his vision for a center that connects students more deeply with the service projects they perform. And he took a pilgrimage to El Salvador last summer to see where his personal hero, Oscar Romero, had lived, and to talk with people who’d been touched by him.

Romero was supposed to be a non-controversial figure when he was selected as archbishop of El Salvador in 1977. But the assassination of a friend led him to take on the cause of poor farmers and speak out. Romero himself was assassinated in 1980.

Drain has spent a lot of time reflecting on what Romero would think of the center; before Romero died, he said he would rise again in his people. The center is a way of helping to fulfill that dream. Drain is passionate about trying to embody and to work into programs the principles Romero stood for: “We encounter Christ in very profound and real ways through working with the poor.”

The Romero Center has student coordinators working in four areas: hunger and homelessness, peace and nonviolence, economic justice, and immigrant rights. The enthusiasm of these students knows no bounds — they dream up collaborations with other universities and want to hold large conferences on campus — so much so that Drain has to rein them in at times. “We don’t need to do everything in one semester,” he laughs.

One of the students making big plans is Cheryl Clark, the center’s economic justice coordinator, who wants to make sure the campus serves “fair trade” coffee. In other words, making sure that with every cup of java, producers are getting a fair deal and are able to earn a livable wage. She’d also like to organize an informational fair for social justice organizations and make sure that all USD merchandise is sweatshop-free.

“It begins with changing yourself, and in turn influencing others to change,” says Clark, who’s been studying abroad at Oxford.

Drain also points to others who make the center a vibrant part of the USD community. In particular, he says that Cara McMahon, a former university minister and current resident minister in Manchester Village, “lent much of her time, energy and passion to the work.”

And when it comes to truly embodying the center’s mission, Drain singles out two students for special recognition: student coordinator for hunger and homelessness Matt Meyer and coordinator for immigrant rights Nancy Tomb.

The word “intentional” crops up a lot when Drain speaks. “So much of the success, inspiration and passion behind the center comes from the students,” he says. “They’re making an intentional decision to live out their faith.”

The Oscar Romero Center for Action in Faith may be just a baby, but it’s growing into its role as a place that inspires students to live up to these words of Romero’s: “Those of us who have a voice, we must speak for the voiceless.”

photos by ROBERT BURROUGHS