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Philadelphia may be the city of Wawa, the city of Eagles fans, or the city brotherly love. But it’s also so much more...and ����������� students are hoping to explore that.

The Tri-Co Philly Program—a semester-long, non-residential program that provides students both curricular and co-curricular activities in Philadelphia—fosters engagement with the diversity, complexity, innovation, and systems of the city. It’s finishing its first semester pilot this May and taking final applications for next fall this week.

Amadea Bekoe-Tabiri ’21 says she applied to Tri-Co Philly to get a better sense of Philadelphia and the communities that have shaped it. “Philly is really diverse, and you see a lot of folks from different cultures, countries, and socioeconomic backgrounds.”

It’s much more diverse than her home in the suburbs of Bergen County, NJ, she says; that’s part of what drew her to the program.

A corresponding diversity in experience is part of what Calista Cleary, the program director, hopes Tri-Co Philly will continue to offer. So far, the students have attended a city council session, listened to a speaker at Kelly Writers House, snacked with food writer Rick Nichols at Reading Terminal Market, visited Mother Bethel A.M.E Church, toured Eastern State Penitentiary to learn about prison labor, and eaten dinner with the Haverford House fellows in West Philadelphia.  “I’ve heard from students already about the confidence they gain from navigating the city,” Cleary says.

Bronx native Destiny Lamar ’20 was already familiar with Philadelphia when she applied to Tri-Co Philly. She lived there over the summer and fell in love with the city.

“I realized it wasn’t that different from home… the transportation was easy to get used to, the city was always active, the area was very diverse and there were a lot of things to do,” she says. “It felt like a community.”

The highlight of both students’ experience so far has been ����������� professor Mecca Sullivan’s course Narrativity and Hip Hop, which challenges students to practice awareness of their own privilege and positionality as they move through the spaces of the city. It’s both fun (to every class she brings snacks from a different part of Philadelphia) and reflective. For Destiny, this is critical.

She says, “Our classes take place in a relatively safe, central area. But Philly isn’t all rainbows and unicorns, you know?”

In Sullivan’s class, Destiny says, students have had the opportunity to acknowledge and engage with the city’s complexity, as well as with the way sexuality, race, and dis/ability shape local artists and their work. It’s helped her engage with the topic she now intends to thesis on next year.

Cleary says this engagement is part of what she hopes students will gain from the program. “I think there are a number of benefits: the opportunity for students to see how their scholarship and academic work applies in the real world, the ability to experience and appreciate the diversity of the world we live in, and the chance for students to see cities as the sites of creativity, innovation, complexity that they are.”

For Amadea, Sullivan’s class has done that. “Just being with a group of people in an environment that fosters thought like this—it’s something that I look forward to every Thursday,” she says.

But as the program moves forward, both she and Destiny still think there’s room for change. In future semesters, Destiny says, she’d like to see more activities that take students into those parts of the city not frequented by tourist buses.

“It can be eye-opening. There are such stark economic and racial differences here,” she says. “The program needs to work with both the good and the bad of Philly.”

Calista Cleary says she appreciates reflections like these. “I think this is an incredibly thoughtful group of students who are also very open and aware of social justice issues, and interested in engaging with those. In our program orientation, we did a facilitated discussion on power, privilege, and positionality, in part to get students thinking about this as they enter the city; it’s really important to open up that conversation.”

This fall, they’ll be running the second semester of the program’s three-semester pilot, which focuses on themes of education and environmental justice.

Cleary says she’s excited for the program’s future, particularly as they continue to build relationships with organizations. “Our home here at the Friends Center has been a very happy one,” she says, “and there’s a lot of energy and action in this space… [there are] more than 40 nonprofit organizations that have social justice affiliated missions, and we’re looking forward to growing with them.”

Students interested in participating in the program this fall must contact Cleary at ccleary@haverford.edu or 610-795-1576 prior to applying. Applications are due on Friday, March 29, at 5 p.m.

Tri-Co Philly Program