ABSTRACT
A service-learning project originally developed to ameliorate the devastating effects of homelessness on children offers a model for healing the rift between college students of different ethnic and racial backgrounds. The experience of participating together in the Queens College Big Buddy program profoundly affected their feelings, attitudes, and behavior across ethnic and racial lines. Throughout higher education, religious, racial, and ethnic students have organized themselves into separate student associations. Despite the potential for cross-cultural interaction and education on this amazingly diverse campus, little takes place. By contrast, the Big Buddy program brings 50 college students together from various ethnic and racial backgrounds for protracted periods of time in a service-learning endeavor. On campuses with established ethnic and racial dormitories and/or strong religious or ethnic clubs, the college, as authority figure, has given its imprimatur to these organizations, fostering separatism among students.
