by Jason Skollingsberg
Picture yourself going to college about to graduate with a bachelor degree that will give you an opportunity to make more money than you have ever seen before. Then as you are finishing up an internship you fail for unfair reasons.
You then decide to appeal this to the school in hope of finally walking the aisle, only to have your appeal denied and denied the right to graduate because of this. You then take an obvious step of a lawsuit against the school is the preventing you from getting your degree. This however takes time, time that you do not have.
To provide a better life for you and your child you move to a bigger city looking for a better job to hold you over while waiting for the lawsuit to finish. This town however has broken promises of its own. You are not able to find a descent job and move into a homeless shelter.
This seems good enough to hold you over till you can get a good job to move out and into a better place. However even with all your qualifications that impress any potential employer you see. They seem to want to hire you but then they see it. Your address is the same as the homeless shelter. They see this and then their perception of you changes from a well qualified well worth the investment hire to a homeless lazy bum.
This sad story is not just a story but the life of a woman here in Salt Lake. Her name Karin Hiatt, she has lived this life described above. Although she is well educated, 8 yrs of college, speaks five different languages and has a daughter who counts on her. She has been trying to live the American dream as many of us do, but this dream has been more of a nightmare.
Karin does not give up though she has found comfort in writing a novel at the SLCC's DiverseCity writing project.
Who or what is the cause of this failure and stereotype? Is it you or me? No!
In fact this problem is a problem with society and cannot and should not be linked to one person in particular.
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http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,375007283,00.html
February 7, 2002
