Jahmal Cole (CLA'20) Urges New Students to Get Involved in the Community

Just days before digging into rigorous first-year core classes including statistics and microeconomics, incoming Harris students were reminded of the practical effects of public policy on real people and how simple acts can have immense impact.

Jahmal Cole (CLA’20), CEO and founder of the social impact organization My Block My Hood My City, spoke from the heart in the opening keynote during new student orientation’s Day One Address. Underscoring Harris Public Policy’s mission, he urged students to volunteer, finding ways — from shoveling snow for senior citizens to building a website for a nonprofit — to get past personal roadblocks and make a difference.

His philosophy, he said, is crystallized in 15 words: “What’s something simple I can do that will have a positive impact on my block?”

“You just gotta have a heart full of passion and a soul that’s generated by love. You guys can make a difference,” Cole said.

Katherine Baicker, dean and Emmett Dedmon Professor, called the community organizer someone who “represents everything that we strive for at Harris.”

“He is really a true force,” she said, “for better policy and better outcomes for everyone in our city.”

With its program for teens and volunteer initiatives, My Block My Hood My City works to address social injustice. Cole’s honors and awards range from being named to Crain’s 40 under 40 list in 2019 to receiving this year’s American Red Cross Community Impact Hero Award.

But, Cole said, it’s not awards that motivate him.

He focuses on what he calls simple things, such as hanging holiday lights on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive each year to try to inspire hope, especially among South Side youth.

As he welcomed the students to Chicago and Harris, Cole shared a heartbreaking and heartwarming personal story of how he imagined he’d be accepted at Howard University (he wasn’t) and play for the NBA (he didn’t). Instead he ended up at Wayne State College in Nebraska where a coach taught him a lesson that would resonate throughout his life: that the highest level of maturity is taking full responsibility for your actions.

Cole said he shared the story to show vulnerability, which — in response to a question from a Harris student — he said was one of the things he feared most while growing up. “Now,” he said, “I’m realizing that your vulnerability connects you to people.”

Jeremy Edwards, Harris’ Senior Associate Dean for Academic and Student Affairs, asked Cole what incoming students should know about Chicago, its promise and its hardships.

The city, Cole said, has great architecture, great music and great food. But “we have an issue of race in this country,” he reminded the audience. “It’s unbelievable. It’s time for us to change our perspective.”

That change, Cole said, goes back to the simple things and he urged students to visit neighborhoods in Chicago in order to “inspire hope.”

“I believe,” he said, “that if everybody does something simple, they can create a ripple. You create a ripple. I create a ripple. He creates a ripple. She creates a ripple.”

The result? “Together we create a wave of change.”

Giving Back

Before Cole signed off from the virtual event August 31, students were messaging to ask how they could help. He directed them to his South Side group’s website: formyblock.org.

Harris also offers many ways for students to follow Cole’s exhortation to do good in the community. Such opportunities, said Brandon Kurzweg, Harris’ Assistant Dean of Students, Student Life, provide a range of experiences including showing students the impact that policy has on people to teaching the importance of being civic minded. Students, he said, can watch the Harris Headlines newsletter for information on ways to volunteer. Here are other ways students can give back.

Harris Sponsored

During orientation, Harris students are divided into groups, called a Polis, that are named for South and West Side neighborhoods. The goal this school year, Kurzweg said, is to connect students with nonprofits in their Polis neighborhood as part of a yearlong initiative. Additionally, Kurzweg’s team coordinates communitywide civic projects, such as neighborhood cleanups and blood drives. 

• Harris Policy Labs In this second-year elective, Harris students apply their core-course skills to public policy challenges faced by clients. Projects may be local, national or international; cover policy areas ranging from environmental to philanthropic; and attract clients from the public and nonprofit sectors.

Student Organizations

• Harris Community Action Students involved in this group help build the technical, operational and strategic capacity of nonprofits on Chicago’s South Side. This provides experience in project management, problem-solving and applying core Harris skills. HCA also connects nonprofits with students to share perspectives on local policy issues.
• Urban Policy Student Association UPSA, which describes itself on Harris’ website as a community of students “interested in the policy decisions, political dynamics and social issues that shape cities around the world,” hosts immersion days where students go to neighborhoods to meet with community organizers.