FACULTY NEWS

Laurie Schaffner

Formerly Homeless Professor Uses Fulbright Fellowship to Help Homeless Teens in Guadalajara

Laurie Schaffner, once a homeless teen herself, now focuses her work on kids in trouble. She is an associate professor of criminology, law and justice, who has recently returned from Mexico, where she taught at the University of Guadalajara and did research as a Fulbright scholar. In Guadalajara, Mexico’s second largest city, she saw children washing windshields at major intersections, selling chewing gum or water on the streets and unloading trucks at the markets.

"I was confronted, overwhelmed, by the sights of kids in poverty," Schaffner said.

The bulk of her study, written for CODENI (Colectivo Pro Derechos de la Niñez), a nongovernmental organization (NGO) that works with poverty-stricken young people, involves a comparison of two Guadalajara neighborhoods. Providencia is well-to-do, its streets lined with gleaming late-model BMWs and Mercedes-Benz SUVs. It has a strong neighborhood association and residents who are comfortable in their homes and away from them. Everyone Schaffner interviewed who had grown up there had visited the United States at least once.

In contrast, the neighborhood of San Juan de Dios is bustling but poor. Houses ranging from modest to abandoned, small hotels, bars and corner stores line narrow, crowded streets. San Juan de Dios’ last neighborhood committee disappeared six years ago. Schools are run-down, graffiti-stained and few in number. Evening schools serve children with "conduct disorders."

Schaffner’s report concludes with one vital recommendation. By working together, government and NGOs should institute planning that directly involves residents, provide jobs and job training, and offer education that stimulates social and political activism among the urban poor.

Something else that grew out of Schaffner’s one-and-a-half years in Mexico—including a six-month sabbatical—is a memorandum of agreement between the University of Guadalajara and UIC. Drawn up by Schaffner, the document was signed by the University of Illinois Board of Trustees in January. Its aim is to "develop rich exchanges" benefitting students and faculty of both universities.

A surprisingly large group of students and faculty here have Guadalajara connections. "When I talk to students, many of them say, ‘Oh, that’s where my family is from,’ or, ‘I have an uncle from there,’" she said.

"There are so many needs that couldn’t be explored just by me in a year," Schaffner said.

Her Mexican sojourn created a one-year gap in the summer film festival she introduced in 2005 to the girls’ section of the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center. As many as 60 girls watch the movies with Schaffner and four or five female UIC students. She hopes to resume the festival this year. "The detainees became intensely interested in our students, who were young women of color, too," Schaffner said. "They were asking, ‘You so cool—why would you come here on a Saturday night?’"

Schaffner grew up in Los Angeles. In the seventh grade she was kicked out of school and her home. After a period of homelessness, she went to Mexico to see a friend when she was 16. She stayed 10 years. She worked as a bartender and television engineer, screening footage about homeless children. In her late 30s she attended a city college in San Francisco before transferring to Smith College.

Schaffner went on to earn a master’s degree and doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley. She joined UIC in 2000, where she also holds faculty appointments in sociology and gender and women’s studies.

Adapted from a UIC News article by Gary Wisby, February 25, 2009.