Ri206. Don’t retire from cc. Brown, like many other schools is teeming with tons of amazing, dedicated and idealistic kids who have a great desire to do good and possessing phenomenal talent. Anyone who believes that people who volunteer their time to help others just ‘to feel good about themselves’ is revealing much more about their own biases, cynicism and, yes, racism (as the supposed perception was directed at “white kids”) than about reality. The Swearer Center is an amazing facility offering a tremendous opportunity for those who actually want to do good works to actually accomplish their goal. Not that there is anything wrong with collecting canned goods, but through the Swearer Center much more meaningful work can be done. I think that the ‘perception’ expressed is probably held by some small number of prematurely jaded individuals, but, in the end, who cares? Nobody doing real social justice will care what people think. And there is definitely not a climate, on campus, where working through the Swearer Center subjects anyone to ridicule except maybe from people who are going to guilt white kids just for being white anyways.