Alum Brings Popular Social Justice Message Back to Campus

/News Release Agency - CollegePressReleases.com/ FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE August 30, 2010 

RICHMOND, Ind. — When Jamie Utt ’08 was drawn repeatedly to the lectern in church as a young boy, he didn’t realize the experience would help prepare him for a vocation working toward social justice.

Utt works full-time as a diversity consultant and professional presenter for Quan Presentations. He returned to the Earlham College campus during New Student Orientation (NSO) on Aug. 21 for a third presentation of his extremely popular workshop “The Wall,”  which encourages participants to look within themselves to find solutions to the problems of prejudice, bigotry and hate. 

“I am fulfilling a dream that I first articulated about 10 years ago, when I wanted nothing more than to work for social justice as a professional speaker,” he says.

“I was raised Catholic and at a very young age I started to volunteer as a lector, reading the Gospel during mass. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, I think a lot of my public speaking skills developed through working as a lector. For many people, the hardest part of public speaking is speaking in front of a large audience. At a pretty young age, though, I found myself comfortable reading in front of perhaps 600 people.”

He continued as a lector until the age of 15, and then became active in high school drama and speech and debate.

Early Memories of Race, Injustice Shape Passion By combining his love for public speaking with his commitment to social justice, Utt says he discovered his passion.

One of his earliest memories of race and of injustice occurred at the age of five when he was told that he might need to duck and hide his head while riding in a car through an area that was almost exclusively black.

“It scared the heck out of me,” he says. “As I look back on that experience, I realize how incredibly formative it was in my understanding of race, and this injustice based on misinformed judgments is exactly the kind that I am trying to work against. It made no real sense for a couple of white folks driving through a black neighborhood in Denver to feel unsafe in any way.”

Thus, his first understanding of injustice was not something he recognized at the time as injustice. 

“That’s the privilege of being white,” he says. “Only through a later critical lens, am I able to see how that injustice affected me. The message of ‘The Wall’ is one of self reflection, encouraging people to reconsider how they think about race, class, gender, sexual orientation, ability, religion and so much more because that is how we can change ourselves in hopes of building a more just world.”

In 2003, friend and mentor Terry Smith trained Utt to facilitate Smith’s “The Wall” workshop. Through the years, Utt has worked to make the presentation his own. It is now geared toward high school and college students.

Earlham Education, Projects for Peace Grant: Keys to Success “For a long time I have wanted to pursue this dream,” he says. “I was scared or didn’t feel qualified enough, but a few things really pushed me over the edge into feeling ready to work full time in this area.” Among the contributing factors were a draining two-year teaching stint Utt completed in Chicago’s west side, his Earlham Peace and Global Studies (PAGS) education and the death of his mentor Terry Smith.

“With Terry no longer able to facilitate this message, I felt that I was being called to step up and make my dream a reality,” he says. “And I truly believe that my PAGS education at Earlham equipped me with a lot of the knowledge-base and relationship-building skills that I need to do this kind of work.”

Utt also attributes a great deal of his success to being a recipient of a Kathryn Wasserman Davis 100 Projects for Peace grant titled “Change from Within,” which gave him the opportunity to spend the summer after he graduated from Earlham presenting “The Wall.”

Utt Always Gets a Standing Ovation at NSO Wendy Seligmann, associate dean for student success at Earlham, says Utt’s presentation has been an extremely popular feature of NSO for the past three years.

“It is the only event that gets a standing ovation,” Seligmann says. “Jamie is really good at getting the students to begin conversations about difficult and uncomfortable topics in a way that students respond to.”

Utt says the workshop relies heavily on the participants and what they bring to the experience, so it varies each time. The core message, however, remains the same. 

“The whole promise of ‘The Wall’ is that we can’t truly see foundational or structural change in society unless we as individuals make the necessary changes in our hearts and minds,” he says. “I truly believe that the answer to overcoming prejudice, bigotry and hate doesn’t lie in picket signs or letters to congresspeople, per se, but in introspection and relationships.”