One of the starkest images of homelessness I have experienced was on the streets of Bloomington at two in the morning last October.
I had made the pilgrimage from my dorm to the Buskirk-Chumley Theatre to see “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” — quite the hike in a pair of sandals and a bathrobe, my costume for the night.
We had just gotten out of the screening, dazed and confused, which is how I assume most people leave their first experience of that movie.
Kirkwood was my safest and best-lit route back to campus, and the line outside Kilroy on Kirkwoods’s was still backed up.
Almost a block from KOK stands Trinity Episcopal Church, where a roofed pathway faces Kirkwood with fencing that gives a glance into the green gardens of the church.
This path is normally clear during the day. However, it serves a far more unfortunate purpose at night.
As we approached the church, passing a food truck and some restaurants, I saw a group of people talking next to a truck across from the covered path.
The truck was in about the same shape as the man I took to be its owner, who was wearing a dirty dun beanie over his shaggy white mane.
The real scene was over in the pathway — homeless men and women were lying about on the stone-cold concrete, huddled up in their sleeping bags.
I felt a deep wave of sadness at seeing others forced to find shelter wherever possible and felt shame that nothing was being done to help them as they slept outside, not inside, a house of worship.
Later, I would learn Bloomington’s churches have programs for the homeless, such as the Interfaith Winter Shelter program, but in that moment, I was struck by what I perceived to be a failure of the Bloomington and IU communities.
These programs positively affect people experiencing homelessness, but fall short of what the IU student body could help to provide for our brothers and sisters without shelter.
Our silence speaks loudly, louder than all of the activists for issues of race, gender or otherwise.
I believe this silence stems from a collective, willful ignorance on our part.
Unfortunately, I would not be surprised to hear the majority of IU’s students have barely considered how the homeless in Bloomington are treated, and less have decided to volunteer their time in order to alleviate the issue.
I know until I walked down Kirkwood late one October night I had not given more than a passing thought to the issue.
I am ashamed to say I did not contribute my time to any of the various organizations which serve people experiencing homelessness last year.
If there is any consolation here, it is that if I can change, others can as well.
There is a disparity between the challenges the homeless of Bloomington face on a day to day basis and the apathy that embodies our student body on the issue.
