What saddens me about the current "conversation" in the Viewpoint section on poverty, wages and Notre Dame is not that many people don't seem to understand the experience of living in poverty, but that they don't realize that there are resources right here to help educate them on the issues.
We don't need to hear the stories of vulnerable people working on campus for evidence (although they have, in the past, written in — see Prudence Dorsey's "Living wage now," April 28, 2008). Journalists have interviewed the working poor, social scientists have studied them.
If you're interested in learning more about the working poor, the problems they face or how poverty affects everyone, check out books like Shipler's "The Working Poor," Shulman's "The Betrayal of Work" or Rank's "One Nation, Underprivileged." Or take a course offered by Poverty Studies (see www.nd.edu/~poverty).
We have more than Catholic doctrine or living examples to offer the debate. Use your resources to make informed calls for social change and justice (or to argue against them).
Jessica L. Collett
assistant professor
Department of Sociology
Feb. 25
