About This Project
The Social Justice Project
For almost the last two decades, every graduating senior at Fontbonne Academy has undertaken a capstone social justice project on a topic of her choosing. Over the course of senior year, each student researches the theological and historical backgrounds of her topic, and with this information develops an action plan to combat the injustice she’s been studying. This work culminates into a final presentation that the Fontbonne community has the chance to experience during our annual Social Justice Fair.
As a Catholic institution that values supporting women’s education and giving back to one’s communities, Fontbonne encourages its young women to explore injustices they recognize in the world and wish to make a change to. Fontbonne teaches its students that we are all called to care for the dear neighbor, and thus every graduating student must take up this responsibility as a requirement for service.
Personal Convictions
As someone who will be studying architecture in college, the issue of hostile architecture is very dear to me. Aside from this, my personal values call for dignity of all people and active participation in ones communities, and these views align precisely with the Catholic Social Teachings I have been brought up on for the past 13 years in Catholic schooling. Yet, while I may be advancing my knowledge on this injustice in the future, I would still like to enact some amount of change at this moment. Thus, in an effort to further the wonderful work of organizations like Strong Towns and the Neighborhood Design Center, I will be committing to a plan of action that involves spreading awareness for the issue of hostile architecture and gathering feedback from my local communities on its impact in their lives. With the information I have gathered from my research and interviews with people in the field, the path I want to take is that of informing the public, as poor channels of communication seem to be a fatal flaw in our systems. Personally, I believe that healthy communication is the backbone of our society– something that is corroborated by CST as stated in the previous part of this paper– and with my acute, deeply-rooted sense of justice, I frequently have the desire to carry out many of the CSTs through my research, work, and education.
The Action Plan
The first element of my action plan is to develop a website that is accessible to the public and easy to read, making it approachable for a wide range of groups and individuals. This site will include a download for the previous three parts of this paper along with any further commentary and research notes I have accumulated. While my main goal is to spread awareness on this issue, I also want to foster interpersonal connection by collecting images of local hostile architecture from individuals around the world. Not only will this stimulate dialogue around this injustice, it will also allow me to gather statistics on how hostile architecture impacts every one of us and how it manifests in different cultures.
That leads me into the second element of my action plan, which is a simple survey that will collect data on how people view hostile architecture, how it affects them, and how present they perceive it to be around them. I hope that through this project, more people will come to recognize not only the forms hostile architecture can adopt, but the ways in which it harms humanity as a whole. My profound conviction to make the world a better place is both influenced by how I was raised and by the CST that has surrounded me throughout my education, and I am now seeking to share that with others as a means to carry out such a dream.