The concept of “town-gown” relations often evokes an “us vs. them” mentality. And yet, our Ignatian heritage calls us to something different, rooted in the maxim that “St. Ignatius loved the cities,” where human communities intersect, transformational learning happens, and space and power are shared.
To meet today’s challenges – from political deadlock to racial injustice and economic inequality – universities and cities need to work together to make positive change. At The University of Scranton, we have undertaken two significant projects in recent years that have drawn on our strengths as a Jesuit and Catholic liberal arts institution together with the assets and insights of our local community. “Scranton’s Story, Our Nation’s Story,” supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, explores a multi-faceted narrative of Scranton in ways aimed at building a stronger community and fostering a more just democracy. And the “Living Wage Report,” rooted in Catholic Social Teaching, advocates for economic justice in Northeastern Pennsylvania through research data, community agency insights, and residents’ voices.
Scranton’s Story, Our Nation’s Story
Who belongs in Scranton? The nation? Who has been systematically excluded? Whose story has not been heard? These questions cannot be fully answered by any one entity. This project has sought to broaden our understanding of who a Scrantonian is and, by extension, who an “American” is, reflecting on what is needed to achieve a “more perfect union” in the run-up to the 250th anniversary of the United States in 2026.
Since August 2021, faculty, staff and students from across different departments at the University have helped co-curate lectures, dialogues, story gathering, experiential walking tours, and film screenings across the city with multiple community partners including local historians, community activists and faith leaders. We have offered important new angles on well-told Scranton stories, such as highlighting the role of women in the garment industry following the decline of coal, and explored underrepresented narratives of Indigenous, Black and recent immigrant and refugee communities.
While Scranton is often described as a “white working-class city,” it also has longstanding and more recent diversity that is made invisible in that rendering. Local communities and national democracies struggle to knit together a more complex and full story lest it lead to a lack of cohesion. Canadian, Catholic philosopher Charles Taylor describes a “temptation to exclude those who can’t or won’t fit easily into the identity which the majority feels comfortable with, or believes alone can hold them together.”
But authentic together-ness cannot be achieved without confronting legacies of colonization and racism. As On Juneteenth author Annette Gordon-Reed wrote, “We can’t be of real service to the hopes we have for places—and people, ourselves included—without a clear-eyed assessment of their (and our) strengths and weaknesses.”
Indigenous experience is an especially absent Scranton story due to the realities of forced removal. In November 2022, as part of a 3-day university-community convening, Curtis Zunigha, an enrolled member of the Delaware Tribe of Indians and Lenape Center co-director/founder, discussed this history of “being pushed westward…in this horrible atmosphere of war and dom¬ination,” to open a dialogue about a way forward based on “shared occupancy” and planting seeds for ongoing relationship-building.
Through a program on “Black History and Housing in Scranton,” Glynis Johns, CEO/Founder of the Black Scranton Project, shared the not well-known history of a predominantly African American neighborhood that was demolished in the 1960s-70s to make way for redevelopment. Johns cited Black resident Louis Fisher’s opposition: “We do not need a plan for colored people. Open the houses next door,” he said, alluding to how Black Scrantonians were routinely denied access to properties outside of that neighborhood.
Amidst such underrepresented stories, commonalities have also emerged. Scranton grew due to coal mining jobs that drew immigrants from across Europe. Today, Scranton remains a migration destination with individuals and families coming from across Latin America, as well as global refugees continuing to seek a better life.
The project will culminate in Fall 2023 with a “Scranton Stories” collection archived by The University of Scranton as a lasting community resource.
Living Wage Study
Beginning in 2016, The University of Scranton and local public policy research group, The Institute, set out to better understand what constitutes a living wage in Northeastern Pennsylvania: the threshold where a household can meet their essential basic needs and live a modest but dignified life. Using the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s living wage calculator and modeled initially after a similar study undertaken by fellow Jesuit institution Loyola University New Orleans, Scranton has now replicated this report three times, adding new elements each time.
The 2022 report lays out the inadequacy of the minimum wage still being $7.25 in PA; details significant challenges facing those who fall below the living wage; and discusses other mitigating factors including racial disparities in homeownership rates, the need for affordable housing, and the impact of inflation and the COVID-19 pandemic.
The report draws on Catholic Social Teaching in support of economic justice, solidarity, and the dignity of work. It also includes the insights of multiple community agency leaders sharing their own expertise, and interviews with local residents providing firsthand perspective on economic hardship. One interviewee, Ronnie, talked about the difficulty of functioning on low wages and the need for empathy: “People need to learn to live in other people’s environments…so you can understand what people go through,” Ronnie said.
The report provides a socio-economic gauge for the region and a platform for ongoing advocacy and community action.
Collaboration Bears Fruit for All
The projects we have undertaken in Scranton, as a university and with our community partners, are ongoing. We have more work to yet arrive at a new and shared local and national narrative; more still to do to achieve economic security for all of our neighbors.
At Jesuit institutions, the call to educate students “for and with others” involves important cautions. Doing something primarily “for” others can cause harm when not undertaken in collaboration with the group seeking assistance and justice. To be truly “with” – where belonging and human flourishing can happen – communities and countries need to wrestle with uncomfortable realities and histories.
Paying attention to subsidiarity – valuing those closest to a problem as experts – can help avoid paternalistic patterns. In his 2021 World Day of the Poor message, Pope Francis said: “Acts of charity presuppose a giver and a receiver, whereas mutual sharing generates fraternity. Almsgiving is occasional; mutual sharing, on the other hand, is enduring.”
University-community partnerships call for listening and humility, a willingness to forgo control in favor of collaboration. This process of re-orienting our ways of working together has the potential to break down “town” and “gown” silos and bear much fruit for all.
By Julie Schumacher Cohen, Assistant Vice President for Community Engagement and Government Affairs, The University of Scranton