This summer Upward Bound celebrated its 50th anniversary. To celebrate, we spent last Friday learning about the history of the program that helps provide education opportunities for all students and the impact it has had on its alumni.
First we heard from Jim Melcher, a University of Maine at Farmington professor. He told us about what was going in 1964 at the same time that Upward Bound was first created. In the year 1964, Lyndon B Johnson first declared the War on Poverty, the Beatles first appeared on the Billboard Chart at 35, and Maine’s Margaret Chase Smith ran for president of the United States.
We then rotated through three seminars about how different kinds of activism were related to Upward Bound. The speakers were: musician Scott Swan, writer John Rosenwald, and Sen. Tom Saviello. First, we learned about different kinds of activism expressed through music, writing, and public service.
In the activism through music seminar we learned about how music has an impact on people and how the message within the songs affect the way we look at things. Sometimes the messages are more subliminal but sometimes the very message is in the words themselves. In the writing activism seminar we learned about how something as simple as writing a question to put on a ballot can change so much for so many people. In the last seminar we talked a lot about career paths and the wide variety of aspirations in the room. Branching off of that topic Saviello encouraged all of us at one point in our lives to get involved in some sort of public service.
After the seminars we got to see a play that 16 of our own Upward Bound students in the UMF program had put together. They interviewed Upward Bound leaders, alumni, and staff from Washington D.C. to Cambodia and performed their original play in recognition of Upward Bound’s 50th anniversary.
They did all of this in just three short weeks.
The play was powerful and inspiring whether you’re in the program or you’ve never heard of it before. They took the stories and interviews and reenacted them in a unique and moving way.
One of the alumni portrayed in the play didn’t even have access to running water before coming to Upward Bound and then after the summer was over they had to return home. Others didn’t have things like sheets or electricity. When they put it all together it was a grand showing of how this program has dramatically affected so many people who have gone on to do great and amazing things!
Our last but certainly not least speaker of the day was Karen Keim. She is the president of New England Educational Opportunity Association. She impressed upon us the importance of taking action and working for what we want. No one is going to hand us anything for free but I strongly believe that anyone in the Upward Bound program can achieve whatever it is they desire if only they get up and go for it.
Michael Hilton of Bingham, graduated from high school this year. This is his third summer attending the Upward Bound program on the University of Maine at Farmington campus and, as part of his course work, is writing for the Daily Bulldog. He will be starting his freshman year at Colby College in the fall.
