Urban Plunge has been a Prep tradition for over fifteen years. In it, sophomores go out to help out the poor, marginalized, and those with various physical or mental disabilities in different centers across the greater Seattle area. Some locations include Northwest Harvest, Operation Sack Lunch, UGM-Hope, and the YWCA, among others. Along with service to the community, sophomores experience a simulated shelter in the gym, as well as a two dollar budget the next morning with which breakfast must be purchased.
Urban Plunge has seen some changes since Prep started doing it, some relatively new, and others change depending on the year. Ms. Forte, the head of service program, thinks the changes to the retreat have worked well this year.
“This year is the first year that we have done the Urban Plunges by collegio, which is really, really exciting for us,” she says. “With the change of having service hours more integrated into the Collegio curriculum in the sophomore year, it just made sense for us to do four urban plunges instead of three and to do it by Collegio. That is the biggest change in recent years and we think it’s been really great this year. Students are able to bond with their Collegio group, who they already are seeing a lot of during the week, and talk about their urban plunge experience in Collegio because it just happened, as opposed to randomly…”
There is one thing that hasn’t changed about the Plunge all these years, and that is the main idea. As Ms. Forte so eloquently puts it, “…the basic themes of the retreat, in terms of how [I can] be of service to others, and how [I can] be fed and nourished spiritually, [and] emotionally by the experience of serving, have remained the same since the plunge started.
A few days after the retreat, sophomores are asked to use the Oh!-How?-So?-Go! method to reflect on their experiences. According to Ms. Forte, that is one of the things that makes Prep’s Urban Plunge so unique.
“I think that the Urban Plunge is unique to our environment as a Jesuit school because we’re able to talk about social justice and Catholic social teaching as what motivates us to do the kind of work that we’re doing on the Urban Plunge. At a public school or maybe even at another Catholic School, students have required service hours… but that idea of reflecting on those service hours afterwords, and [on] why we would want to serve (other than that it is required) and [on] what kind of gifts we are given through the experience of serving others… wouldn’t necessarily be a part of it.”
One of Ms. Forte’s favorite parts of the Plunge is the Mass at the end of the first day because, “It’s really amazing to see in that short three hour period of time that folks are out in the community, what an impact that makes on students and their perceptions of what someone [who] is homeless or experiencing homelessness…[is truly like].
This year’s sophomores shared what they liked about their Urban Plunges as well. Hudson Patterson ’18 said, “Urban plunge allowed me to connect with the homeless in a way I had never experienced. I learned to be thankful for what I have, and to enjoy life for what it is!” About her experience, Julia Ribas ’18 stated “The Urban Plunge was a humbling experience, and I learned that no matter where you go, you’ll always find people with joyful spirits and thankful hearts.”