Civility Week Spring 2025

Civility Week Community Agreement

We come together during Civility Week to enhance our understanding of, and learn more about, the meaning and importance of civility. We commit to honest, brave, respectful conversation, where participants are encouraged to speak openly, listen actively, embrace curiosity and gather wisdom. Together, we will strive to:

Learn and grow

Listen and understand

Recognize that experiences are perceived

Acknowledge where power and privilege exist; and

Provide space for all voices to share

Civility Statement

“Brookdale Community College is committed to freedom of expression while maintaining a civil and ethical learning environment. We believe that a community composed of people with diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and abilities promotes learning and engagement. We are responsible for treating one another with respect and kindness regardless of our differences.”

Spring 2025 Theme

Fight Poverty, Not the Poor

The upcoming Civility Week builds on the powerful learnings from Fall 2024 Civility Week to inspire real, actionable change. Together, we can transform awareness about poverty into meaningful impact for our students, employees, and all Monmouth County community members.

Registration Link for Events

February 17 – 21, 2025

Monday, February 17: The Alternatives to Violence Project: A communication and conflict resolution workshop led by Human Services Students
Presenter: Angela Kariotis, Director of the Center for Transformative Learning
Time: 11:00am – 12:00pm
Location: Twin Lights I SLC 106

Description: This communication and conflict resolution workshop will be led by Human Services students and feature Angela Kariotis, the Director of the Center for Transformative Learning (CTL). As CTL fellows in Fall 2024, students studied skills and strategies to de-escalate high-tension situations and promote civil discourse.

Tuesday, February 18: Global Poverty Presentation
Presenters: Kelsey Maki, English & Faculty Coordinator for Global Citizens Project (GCP), Janice Thomas, International Education Center, and Student Members of GCP and the International Student Association (ISA)
Time: 11:45am – 1:15pm
Location: Twin Lights I SLC 106

Description: In this interactive panel discussion, Brookdale students representing the International Student Association (ISA) and Students for Global Citizenship (S4GC) will explain the causes and consequences of poverty in select countries outside the United States, with advisement from Kelsi Maki and Janice Thomas.

Tuesday, February 18: Poverty-Informed Teaching Practices
Presenter: Sara Burrill, Psychology Faculty Fellow to the Center for Transformative Learning
Time: 1:30pm – 2:30pm
Location: Twin Lights I SLC 106

Description: What are “poverty-informed teaching practices,” exactly? How do they help students in poverty? Do they help all students? Are there any that I might want to use in my classroom? Can you explain and show them to me… quickly? “Yes” is the answer to the last question. Join Sara Burrill, faculty fellow at the Center for Transformative Learning, for this fun and informative college instructor’s workshop.

Wednesday, February 19: Cost of Poverty Experience (COPE)
Presenters: Dr. Anita Voogt, Gina Giannattasio, & the COPE Committee
Time: 11:30am – 2:00pm
Location: Twin Lights I & II SLC 106 & 107

Description: COPE is an immersive experience, created by people with lived experience in poverty. The “college edition” provides a foundational understanding of poverty and its many tentacles, as experienced by many college students every day. COPE fosters empathy and encourages meaningful conversation about social justice, equity, and the importance of creating an inclusive community at Brookdale

Thursday, February 20: Stigma-Free Speaker Series
Presenter: Dr. Christine Greco-Covington, Psychology and Human Services Club
Time: 1:30pm – 2:30pm
Location: Twin Lights I and II – SLC 106 & 107

Description: Join Dr. Christine Greco-Covington and Students in the Psychology and Human Services Club as they go past the surface and have a “Real Talk” about the challenges of Stigma. Special guest Peter-Donnell Boynton, Director of the Monmouth County Department of Human Services, will speak about his experience growing up in poverty and the stigma he felt and now works to eliminate for people in poverty in our county.

Thursday, February 20: “This is not Financial Advice” Documentary Discussion and Q & A
Presenters: Elana Maloney, English, Documentary Director Zach Ingrasci, and a representative from The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA)
Time: 7:30pm – 8:45pm
Location: Remote Live*
Zoom link to access this event: https://brookdalecc.zoom.us/j/96471012706

Description: This Is Not Financial Advice is a 2023 Tribeca Film Festival-selected documentary about cryptocurrency, financial literacy, and equity.

Glauber Contessoto gambles his life savings on a joke cryptocurrency. Two months later, he becomes “The Dogecoin Millionaire” and an internet legend. While it might seem easy to get rich online, it’s even easier to lose it all.

Join this Q&A to spark dialogue around the state of financial education and equip and empower yourself to feel more confident understanding cryptocurrency and navigating your relationship with money.
Note: It is recommended but not required that audience members watch the documentary in advance:
https://vimeo.com/showcase/11551860?share=copy (Password: BCC2025), with trailer and summary available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er6G5Slw-Kg

*Educator resources can be accessed here: https://www.tinfafilm.com/educator-portal

Friday, February 21: “Living Room Conversation”: Poverty at Brookdale
Presenters: Dr. Ave Latte, Education & Angela Kariotis, Director of the Center for Transformative Learning
Time: 11:00am – 12:15pm
Location: SLC 103

Description: Participants will meet for an intimate conversation about their experiences with poverty and/or helping to alleviate poverty. All faculty, students, administrators, staff, and community members are welcome to share their thoughts and feelings on these subjects in a supportive environment. Reflection on Fall and Spring 2025 Civility Weeks and their impact on Brookdale’s values, programs, and policies will take place.

Some of the key insights from Fall 2024 Civility Week include:

Poverty is stressful, every single day.
Being poor is expensive (e.g., late fees, higher interest rate, etc.).
Poverty creates multifaceted challenges, impacting housing, transportation, food security, childcare, education, employment, health, and wellness.

The consequences of poverty can be mitigated by:

Quality public education
Mentorship programs
Positive role models
Public assistance that operates effectively and efficiently
A higher minimum wage & a living wage for all full-time employees
Reducing stigma
Building class solidarity

Since Fall 2024 Civility Week, Brookdale has taken the following actions:

Retained the consultation of Dr. Chad Dull, the nationwide leader in “poverty informed practices in higher education” and declared poverty-informed practice an Academic Affairs priority
Embraced a poverty-informed framework across all divisions at Brookdale with an eye toward our North Star 60×30 Goal
Introduced “poverty-informed practices” in Brookdale classrooms via the Engaged Pedagogy Faculty Group
Raised more than $10,000 for loaner laptops and laptops for students in poverty
Established a Student Meal Voucher Program at the Wellness Center
The Wellness Center is working toward establishing an Emergency Relief Fund
Hosted multiple Cost of Poverty Experience (COPE) events to build awareness about the realities of poverty and broaden our perspective on the prevalence and difficulties of experiencing significant financial hardship
Strengthened our capacity to advocate together

Join Us to Build Momentum!

Spring 2025 Civility Week is your opportunity to deepen our collection impact. Let’s channel what we’ve learned into tangible progress at Brookdale and beyond. We want and need your voice, your ideas, and your commitment. Here’s how you can get involved:

Watch Chad Dull’s inspiring Fall Keynote Address and listen to the Spotify playlist featuring his 8-minute episodes on poverty-informed practices.
Here is a helpful guide for discussions within departments.
Participate in the Civility Week (Wednesday, February 19) COPE and experience the many challenges poverty presents.
Contribute to the Civility Week (Friday, February 22) Living Room Conversation on poverty – let’s talk and take action together.
Join the Reading Circle on Zoom: Poverty-Informed Practices in Higher Education

We do not yet live in the world we want to live in when it comes to treating people in poverty with dignity and truly working to alleviate poverty, but together we can make it so.

About COPE

Why COPE, Poverty, and Civility Week?

COPE is an immersive experience, created by people with lived experience in poverty. The “college edition” provides a foundational understanding of poverty and its many tentacles, as experienced by many college students every day. In this way, COPE fosters empathy and encourages meaningful conversation about social justice, equity, and the importance of creating an inclusive community at Brookdale. It promotes civil discourse and thus serves as a building block to creating a more compassionate, informed, and proactive campus community.

About Cost of Poverty Experience (COPE): College Edition

This COPE event is a 2.5-hour simulation that will lead you to explore the experience of poverty through the eyes of real college students. Participation will engender empathy, catalyze important discussion, and empower you to respond to issues of poverty and Brookdale students who face poverty with care, compassion, and competency.

Brookdale faculty, administrators, staff, and students, as well as community members, are invited to participate in this engaging week of programming!
In-person events will take place in Twin Lights I & II in the Student Life Center.
You will be emailed a Zoom link a few days in advance of remote live events.
Please only register for events that you plan to attend, but know drop-ins are always welcome

COPE Event Overview: The Cost of Poverty Experience (COPE): College Edition at Brookdale Community College

Brookdale Community College invites all employees, including faculty, staff, and administrators, to join “The Cost of Poverty Experience (COPE): College Edition,” an impactful and essential event addressing the experience of poverty for today’s college student. This immersive experience prompts participants to embody the daily struggles and visceral realities faced by college students living in poverty. Once experienced, you can’t unknow it. The goal is to drive empathy into action. By fostering understanding and solidarity, the event aims to embolden college employees to craft and execute new plans, practices, and policies to support students who struggle with poverty (e.g., establish an Emergency Relief Fund for students who encounter emergencies (e.g., job loss, unexpected medical bills, etc.); remove registration holds for students who carry a tuition balance; provide ride share cards to students in fieldwork; create paid mentorships for students in career programs, employ poverty informed teaching practices, etc.).

Understanding the Struggle

Many of us are in this struggle. 38 million Americans live “under the poverty line” and many millions more feel the weight of financial burden every day. In the face of rising inflation, the grocery store check-out, the cost of childcare, an impossible housing market, and the historic inequities of capitalism, the cost of living continues to escalate, disproportionately affecting the working class – yet affecting nearly all groups to differing degrees. Today, 59% to 62% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck; they are only one paycheck away from potential homelessness. The average cost of an emergency plunging a family into deprivation is just $400. The “True Poverty Level” in New Jersey, as reported by Legal Services of New Jersey’s Poverty Research Institute, was $72,000 for a family of three in 2021 and has only worsened by 2024. This means that many hard-working people, with seemingly decent salaries, still struggle financially.

Children, Poverty, and the Failure of the Grown-ups

Poverty has a devastating impact on children, affecting their education, health, and general wellbeing. As of 2023, 11.6 million children, or 16% of all U.S. children, live in poverty. These children are more likely to experience food insecurity, with 1 in 6 lacking access to enough food. You cannot learn if you are hungry; thus, education is severely impacted. Students from low-income families are five times more likely to drop out of high school than their more affluent peers. Additionally, health outcomes are dire for children living in poverty, with a staggering 60% more likely to suffer from mental health issues such as depression and anxiety. Children do not have control over their life and the policy that informs it. Children lack power because they do not have the ability to organize. But adults can. NYU Business School Professor Scott Galloway asks, “Do we care about our children?” According to current social and economic policies, and their associated outcomes, the answer is up for debate.

The Social Determinants of Health

The “social determinants of health” includes the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live, and age. Examples of these determinants impacting college students include food insecurity, inadequate housing, and lack of access to healthcare. Understanding these factors is critical to addressing the root causes of poverty and related physical and mental health outcomes and is essential to developing effective solutions. In other words, poverty is a public health issue that must be addressed via a comprehensive understanding of its etiology and the utilization of an upstream approach.

The Criminalization of Poverty

Society often criminalizes poverty, imposing legal penalties on those who are unable to afford basic needs or fail to meet financial obligations. For college students, this may mean facing legal consequences due to unpaid bills or incurring fines that lead to increased stress and barriers to academic success. Criminalizing poverty perpetuates the cycle of disadvantage and makes it harder for individuals to escape poverty. “Fight poverty. Not the Poor,” is a slogan born of this trend.

The Importance of Solidarity

Before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, he was in the process of planning the largest multi-racial, intergenerational coalition the world has ever seen: The Poor People’s March on Washington. He did not live to see it. In the same spirit, especially during a time when polarization and separateness is at a fever pitch in our country, COPE harkens the solidarity that Dr. King envisioned. At Brookdale, we can be truly united against poverty to best serve our students. A concerted, collegewide effort to effect change for students who face poverty at Brookdale, a leader among community colleges, has never been more timely or more necessary.

Why This Matters

If systems are designed, they can be redesigned. COPE brings Brookdale employees together to mark the College’s commitment to understanding and supporting students in poverty. By participating in the learning experience as a whole community, we can make this event truly impactful by first understanding the far-reaching effects of poverty then taking actionable steps to support students in ways and to an extent that Brookdale has never done before. Be there to be a part of something revolutionary!

Civility Week