Dante Jenkins discusses a prompt about whether the government should provide free housing to individuals Tuesday during Professor Jacob Avery’s class on housing insecurity and homelessness at New Mexico Highlands University in Las Vegas.
Jessica Garcia Montoya responds to the prompt given to students Tuesday during professor Jacob Avery’s housing insecurity and homelessness class at New Mexico Highlands University.
{p class=”p1”}Professor Jacob Avery speaks to students Tuesday during his housing insecurity and homelessness class at New Mexico Highlands University.{/p}
{p class=”p1”}Students listen to a presentation on George Orwell’s piece “A Day in the Life of a Tramp” on Tuesday during Professor Jacob Avery’s class on housing insecurity and homelessness at New Mexico Highlands University.{span class=”Apple-converted-space”} {/span}{/p}
Dante Jenkins discusses a prompt about whether the government should provide free housing to individuals Tuesday during Professor Jacob Avery’s class on housing insecurity and homelessness at New Mexico Highlands University in Las Vegas.
{p class=”p1”}Professor Jacob Avery speaks to students Tuesday during his housing insecurity and homelessness class at New Mexico Highlands University.{/p}
{p class=”p1”}Students listen to a presentation on George Orwell’s piece “A Day in the Life of a Tramp” on Tuesday during Professor Jacob Avery’s class on housing insecurity and homelessness at New Mexico Highlands University.{span class=”Apple-converted-space”} {/span}{/p}
LAS VEGAS, N.M. — Students in Jacob Avery’s housing insecurity and homelessness class at New Mexico Highlands University received an unusual assignment Tuesday night.
Their homework: search for studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments in Santa Fe and Albuquerque.
They were asked to make note of the costs: What are the average and lowest rental prices available? Would a minimum-wage worker be able to afford the apartment working 40 hours per week? What kind of income would be required to rent each apartment without being burdened by payments of more than 30% of a household’s gross income?
The exercise was aimed at helping students who haven’t experienced housing insecurity piece together how residents in Santa Fe and Albuquerque might end up struggling to keep a roof over their head.
Avery said by the end of the semester, students should be able to apply the assignment, class discussions and readings to a much more difficult question: What can we do about it?
That question is at the center of Highlands’ new social justice program.
The program, a concentration in Highlands’ sociology and anthropology department, will employ a solutions-focused approach to understanding and improving societies, said Erika Derkas, a professor of sociology and women’s studies. Social justice students will learn not only what forms of inequity, injustice and oppression exist in modern society but also how social movements and activists work to combat them, Derkas said, adding the program will help prepare students for careers in advocacy, law, human rights and other fields.
“As an academic field, sociology has never been content to simply produce knowledge for knowledge’s sake. It wants its practitioners and students to take things a step further and engage with the world,” Avery said.
Professor Jacob Avery speaks to students Tuesday during his housing insecurity and homelessness class at New Mexico Highlands University.
The social justice concentration, which officially launched during the fall 2022 semester after an approval process, will include a mix of new classes — like a course in restorative justice — and preexisting classes geared toward understanding and dismantling oppression along lines of race, gender and social class, Derkas said.
In each of those classes, students will be asked to examine possible responses to unjust systems as well as how higher education and traditional sociological methods uphold hierarchical forms of oppression.
For example, in Avery’s housing insecurity and homelessness course, students discussed whether housing should be bought and sold as a commodity.
This approach, Derkas said, will invite students to imagine a better society.
“Wanting to just plug in is not what social justice is all about; it’s really being participatory, being a builder of resilient communities,” Derkas said.
Derkas and Avery acknowledge a degree in sociology and anthropology with a concentration in social justice won’t necessarily lead to a specific career path, a factor that might be a hard sell for some prospective students.
“Let’s be real: There are few jobs that explicitly market themselves as seeking a social justice specialist. Not too many job ads look like that,” Avery said.
But there are plenty of career paths open to students specializing in social justice, the professors said.
Jessica Garcia Montoya responds to the prompt given to students Tuesday during professor Jacob Avery’s housing insecurity and homelessness class at New Mexico Highlands University.
Some students might enter traditional advocacy fields, working in legal systems, labor negotiations, humanitarian aid and reconciliation efforts, Derkas said. Others might go on to work at established nonprofits or create their own to combat community challenges.
Still others, Avery added, might find a place at Highlands’ graduate school of social work, attend law school or seek a doctorate, becoming social workers, lawyers and researchers, respectively.
And recent shifts in the cultural zeitgeist toward equity, diversity and inclusion might make social justice specialists particularly valuable as writers, advertisers, educators and more, he said.
“There’s no career for a sociologist specifically, but there’s so many options that you can do. You can explore,” Derkas said.
Dante Jenkins, a third-year student in Avery’s housing insecurity and homelessness course, said he’s hoping to go into law enforcement after graduation — and he sees a clear connection between what he’s learning in class and his future career.
“A lot of law enforcement and people see homeless individuals as just a burden, sort of in the way. They always have a close eye on them. I would like [the class] to hopefully in the future make me more empathetic or understanding,” he said.
For Lenore Standing Elk, a Highlands student who will graduate this spring with a minor in social justice, the program will be a steppingstone into advocacy or nonprofit work.
An enrolled member of the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes in Montana, Standing Elk chose social justice over a more traditional political science track out of concern about the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women. Social justice courses allowed Standing Elk to dive into modern social movements and participate in class discussions about racial equity, reproductive rights, environmental justice and immigration, she said.
After graduation, she’s hoping to apply this knowledge as an advocate for children in the legal system or survivors of domestic violence.
“It could take me just about anywhere,” Standing Elk said of the social justice program. “… It’s a really great program that is really needed at the university level. Having that exposure is invaluable.”
