Samantha McGovern ‘10 is currently the Director of Senior Legal Services (SLS), a non-profit, pro bono organization in Baltimore serving individuals of age 60 and over who are typically unable to afford legal services but, in many cases, needed them the most. Last year, Samantha was the Equal Justice AmeriCorps Legal Fellow at SLS, providing free civil legal services to victims of elder abuse, financial exploitation, and neglect. The Equal Justice AmeriCorps Legal Fellowship for Elder Justice is a program organized through Equal Justice Works, the Department of Justice, and AmeriCorps. After meeting Samantha at President Ensign’s Education for the Common Good rollout event in Baltimore and immediately attracted to Samantha work, I decide that an interview with Samantha will be a great feature for Her Campus Dickinson.
Samantha has always wanted to help people. While at Dickinson, she was very involved with areas where she could apply her interests in philosophy and social issues to better causes such as diversity works. Although initially planning on becoming a professor, she eventually realized from her experiences that she wanted to work with vulnerable people, which led her to discover a career path in social justice for elders.
Needless to say, there is a significant inequality in our society between people of different socioeconomic backgrounds, especially when it comes to access to quality legal services. For financially struggling senior members of society, the situation is only worse. Due to the decrease in social mobility and complicated family matters, these people are often victims of financial exploitation, neglect, and abuse.
Samantha always needs to handle her cases with extreme delicacy because, too often, the abusers are her clients’ direct family members, children in particular. She explains to me one of her most different and emotionally tormenting cases which was with a cancer survivor. The client’s son had been extremely violent toward her. Despite her own struggles and pain, the client was still reluctant to obtain a protective order from her abusive son. Even though Samantha was able to convince her client to initiate an eviction process so that the client could avoid living in the same house as her abuser, her client never came to the court on the day of her hearing. The client was too emotionally torn to take action against her son and decided to deal with the abuse instead. A few months later, her client passed away due to cancer relapse, without ever taking legal action to protect herself against the abuse.
To this day, Samantha regrets the outcome of that case. Indeed, her work pushes her to constantly deal with the dark corners of humanity that we actively choose to overlook and ignore on daily basis. No one is born evil; societal causes, battlefield experiences, and traumas are often mentioned when describing these violent individuals. While there should be no excuses for the abuse, the dilemma between our inclination to forgive those we hold dear and our human instinct to protect ourselves often places Samantha and her clients at the most strenuous, impossible moral crosswalk. The cruel reality is that what her clients absolutely cannot bear is the mere fact that the abusers are their own children.
As the Director of SLS, Samantha is devoted to raising awareness of elder justice issues in the Baltimore community. Uncommon among pro bono legal organizations, SLS goes to communities such as seniors’ homes and assist living facilities to meet seniors and assist them in areas of most dire needs to prevent situations from getting out of hand. SLS prepares estate planning documents, such as advanced medical directives, powers of attorney, and wills, to ensure that seniors’ wishes are respected, and to help seniors age in place (live in their own home and community) if they so choose.
Samantha’s commitment and passion for senior social justice astounds me. I admit that I, too, might have been a “social justice warrior” who is overly attracted to the most embellished, media-covered causes. Despite always tending to their needs when I happen to be in the same room with them, I still change channels when one of those slowly narrated, low-quality commercials on tax help and pension appeals come on TV. As someone considering herself socially conscious and contemplating a potential path to law school, I realize that I have been too attracted to glamour of social justice warrior but refusing to really see the works that really needs and deserves attention that is less glamorous.
It is so easy to claim the world black-and-white and that bad people have hearts made of stone. No one wants to admit that we all can be capable of abuse and violence when things get rough. I, too, have yelled at my grandma for extremely unnecessary reasons. Would I have been physically violent in addition to being just vocal if I was under extreme stress or trauma? The answer is unfathomable.
Another reality that we deny is that we, as a society, are always on the run from the inevitable to pursue what we know deep-down that we can never attain. From Medieval European alchemists to ancient Chinese mercury-drinking emperors, since the beginning of time, we humans are relentless in our pursuits to counter our natural courses of aging. College students binge-drink and dance to “Young, Dumb and Broke” until the sun rises; middle-age men ignore their wives’ bafflement and buy shinning red race cars when their kids are heading to college. Youth is the universal infinity limit that humans will never give up on running toward. We never understand that we age each day we spend on dreaming about being young again.
In other words, working with seniors is a path that is not only underappreciated, but also an issue that everyone wants to dodge because it reminds us of a universally hated truth.
In Baltimore, and on many other occasions, President Ensign calls on Dickinsonians to pursue an education for the common good. There are still so many areas where we can do to take better care of our seniors and make our society a more tolerant place than the one we were born into. For example, seniors are often physically unable to sit through hours of court hearings to seek legal protections from abuse or financial fraud; however, currently, that is also the only way. In addition to so many other far-less-than perfect areas in our society, there needs to be policy changes regarding this situation.
Perhaps one of us will be the champion of that cause.
Why? Because we can.
As many of us contemplate our futures, especially on a campus where a great number will head to pursue a degree in law and policy, I want to call on us to inspect and consider the paths less taken. We might be in our brightest days now, but one day, just as the seniors who are dire of help today, we will want the same affection, care, and attention from our children and grandchildren who will be enjoying their prime time of their lives.
Just like all other social justice issues, this ultimately comes down to human decency and our ability to put ourselves in shoes that are worn by others and will be worn by ourselves someday.