Word: colles
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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During the last few weeks, Harvard students have been looking up from their goolash-on-a-stick to see an unfamiliar face give a speech on poverty in Boston. But unlike the blaring megaphones in Harvard Square, or the threatening posters of the Spartacus Youth League, Edward "Ned" Coll offers easy access to activism, a tangible opportunity to help someone else, and a chance to come in contact with one of the most remarkable social activists in the nation...
...more you learn about Ned Coll the more you are certain he is a lunatic. Looking wildly around as he speaks, waving his hands madly or clenching his fists in manic frustration, he is the Evel Kneivel of activism, a man who has performed daring stunts in the name of social causes. He fasted for 40 days to call attention to the plight of the elderly in Hartford, Conn., he walked from Hartford to Washington to debate a fuel bill for the poor before Congress, he sloshed along the shores of Rhode Island all the way to Greenwich to protest...
...Coll is currently involved with less eccentric activism. He heads the Revitalization Corps, an organization devoted to recruiting college students to battle urban poverty. The conditions of poor housing and education, however, aren't the only things he is trying to revitalize. Coll says the spirit of activism brought out by the war during the '60s is also worth rekindling, to be directed toward the more persistent problem of poverty...
Although he is now spending a couple of days a week here attempting to revitalize that spirit, Ned Coll isn't big on Harvard. In a recent organizational meeting against the draft, as Harvard students quibbled over semantics, motioning this, seconding that, Coll began his remarks, "I used to think Harvard was full of shit. Now I can smell it." It is hard to disagree when Harvard activism is sparked by self-interest, a yearning for the cliquishness of a popular cause, or a self-righteous condemnation of injustices thousands of miles away...
...Coll throws his words and convictions at Harvard students in an attempt to refocus their energy and eliminate the more immediate problems of poverty and racism in Harvard's backyard. He stands in House dining halls, beneath gaudy chandeliers, surrounded by the gazes of past House masters, and tries to describe the Fidelis Way housing project where his revitalization corps is concentrating its efforts. "It's a goddam pit," he says with typical directness, "and it needs your help...