It was just another day in my Social Ethics class when I saw Ava DuVernay’s documentary, 13th. The unit we were studying at that time was rooted in exploring racism as an oppressive system of inequity. But watching DuVernay’s documentary was transformative. It was intensely shocking to witness how the criminal justice system has disproportionately continued to affect people of color, specifically young men. I found myself deeply moved by the injustices occurring so casually within our world. Most of all, I felt called to make a change, to speak out, and to have other people understand the deep-rooted inequities I was more aware of. In that moment, I was also able to recognize the best part of Social Ethics — its ability to call us towards radical change.
Social Ethics is a course at Sacred Heart that has been around for over twenty-five years. It is grounded in the fundamental principles of Catholic Social Teaching. Religion teacher Ms. Karen Lee says that this class helps students “analyze how those principles interact with ethical questions that we encounter in our world today and in recent history.” Through the “see, judge, act” method, students are able to practice empathy for others.
Social Ethics also provides students with the critical tools to respond to acts of injustice that they witness. “People of faith are called to recognize the world as it is and reflect earnestly and respond prophetically on what the Gospel has to say about these realities,” says religion teacher Mr. Matthew Carroll. Social Ethics is a class committed to informing its students about important and timely issues in the world. It’s about reforming the way we see service as well — as less of a quota to fulfill and more of a constant act of love and encounter that keeps giving. Carroll states, “The question isn’t do we do enough, it’s: how do we do more? What more can we do? How much more expansive can our love get? Compassion is not something that we can exhaust.”
Even though I appreciate what the class is and what it stands for, I recognize that Social Ethics is far from a perfect class. We play several games within the class in order to better understand certain hardships, but they often end up feeling childish and almost performative. “Games were supposed to capture the reality of these issues, but it just became a joke,” Samora Stephens ‘26 stated. “For example, the Monopoly games and the border crossing roleplay — there were so many better ways to do that.”
In one class, students played a Monopoly style game where each drew a card of a type of person. On the card was the race and gender of the person, and depending on that, the player would start out with different amounts of money. For example, a white man would have fifty more dollars than a Black man. In addition, the cards in the Chance and Community Chest would benefit the player differently based on identity. In another class, students explored attaining citizenship in the United States by playing an online border crossing simulation game. All these games are born from a good place, with a goal of bringing students towards understanding and empathy. But it’s sad that in order to get students to understand the realities of such situations, we have to dehumanize and decompress the lives of real people who suffer through these struggles. By turning the people’s stories into a game we play in our privileged school in the center of Atheron, we perpetuate the same ignorance that we are arguing against.
The best part of the Social Ethics class is its ability to install a sense of justice within its students. When I watched the 13th, I felt a deep desire to speak out. I was now more aware of — and appalled by — the racism running rampant in our country. Further, when I went on Urban Plunge, I was transformed by the mutuality of encounter. Carroll says, “Those experiences can’t be understated, and it can’t be underscored, encountering the individuals on their own terms, getting out of our own bubble and entering into someone else’s — that’s when the ingredients for conversion and change are so much more effective.”
How can we empower students at Sacred Heart to truly live out these ideals in real life? The challenge is making room within our hearts to find that empathy and care. How do we expand our capacity to understand what people suffer? This often requires discomfort on our part, but this discomfort is necessary for growth and for justice. Lee says that, ultimately, she hopes, “students desire to be agents of change. Eventually, I want them to use the skills and knowledge they have gained to apply that to life in our world.”
Maybe it really is small moments that jumpstart meaningful change. I would like to believe that is what Social Ethics class helps us to cultivate. This ability to be deeply in-tune with the state of our world around us and reflect on it in meaningful ways. I keep remembering something Stephens ‘26 told me: “Sometimes there are little things that not everyone can catch, but I want to be the person that notices those little things and catches them.”
