Tenured in sociology at St. Norbert College, a Catholic school in De Pere, Wis., O’Malley could be leading a comfortable life, teaching and writing about the problems of poor people. Instead, she is putting her ideas into action as the founder, the director and a resident of Crossroads Center for Peace and Justice, a shelter in nearby Green Bay. Her guiding principle is the classical Greek word praxis-“to do.” In academic terms, it means O’Malley practices what she teaches.
Her dual life is unconventional by modern standards. But it grows directly out of sociology’s roots, particularly the work of William James and Jane Addams, who helped poor families. In recent years, sociology has been dominated by theorists and statisticians who study their subjects from afar. Praxis adherents like O’Malley have been left behind. It is, after all, a demanding philosophy. “I couldn’t do it,” says James Benton, coordinator of St. Norbert’s sociology department. “I’m terrible at working with the poor.”
Although she’s admired by many faculty members and students, O’Malley is controversial on campus. Her critics say her activism limits her scholarship; some students complain that she occasionally misses classes because she’s at the shelter. Her normal teaching load is six courses a year, including a senior seminar on “praxis issues.” How can anyone so committed to an issue remain objective? “Objectivity and neutrality are not the same thing,” she says, arguing that she can be an advocate for the homeless and still study the causes of their plight. Says Benton, “I don’t have anyone saying she’s propagandizing.”
The personal stress on O’Malley has been enormous. At 49, she’s as haggard as some of the shelter’s residents. “The physical and emotional strains were visible last year,” says Robert Horn, vice president for academic affairs and dean of the college. “A lot of us are worried about her.”
At the end of last semester, O’Malley told college officials that she wanted to take a year off to work full time for the homeless. She was initially denied a leave. After much negotiation, the school suspended her, leaving open the possibility that she could return next September. “I felt that she needed a year to sort out her priorities,” says Horn. O’Malley insists she’ll do what she thinks is right, no matter the consequences. “I’ve always had a sense of what I needed to do with my life,” she says.
After dropping out of Boston College in 1962 because women weren’t allowed to major in sociology, O’Malley went on to earn five degrees, including a doctorate from Columbia in 1982. She taught in Ohio before moving to St. Norbert in 1984. Along the way, she became an activist, first working for a Black Panther-organized community house in Cambridge while her husband, Lou, got a master’s degree in education at Harvard. She and her husband, who lives at Crossroads with her, also raised seven children; the youngest, Elena, is a junior at Harvard (“She may be the only kid who goes home from Harvard to a homeless shelter,” says Lou).
All along, O’Malley says, her father, Louis F. Solano, was an inspiration. A professor of romance languages at Harvard for 49 years, “he really believed in justice,” she recalls. For much of his Harvard career, Solano worked part time at a diner to make ends meet. “My parents never owned a home, and we’d get evicted a lot,” says O’Malley. “I grew up with this sense that you’re really at the mercy of a landlord.” But it wasn’t until 1986, when she visited activist Mitch Snyder’s shelter in Washington, D.C., that O’Malley decided to focus on the homeless. That year, she helped found The Next Step, a group that works with the homeless in Green Bay. Crossroads opened in 1990.
Despite her suspension, the college has supported her extracurricular life. A trustee volunteers to do Crossroads’ legal work. O’Malley was given tenure even though she rarely publishes. “Professor O’Malley raises student consciousness,” says Thomas A. Manion, the school’s president. There is a cost. The school has scrambled to fill her course load, hiring two part-time professors. One course had to be canceled. Says Benton, half joking, “We have an awful hard time living with a saint.”
Indeed, O’Malley speaks of her work in religious terms. “I consider it a calling,” she says. Once a Roman Catholic, she says she’s spiritual, not religious. Prayers are taped to her door; she also wears a Native American medicine bag on a leather necklace. But even at the shelter, she’s a teacher. Michelle Boyd, a high-school senior, came to Crossroads after she and her infant son were evicted. O’Malley has opened her mind, she says. “I really like sociology and psychology, contemporary social problems,” she says. “I wasn’t interested in politics before I came here.”
Will praxis save the world? Probably not, says O’Malley’s husband, Lou, who describes Crossroads as a “stopgap.” He left his job as a high-school principal and now works for the local cable-television company. “One of the reasons that I have so little use for academics is they don’t get anything done,” he says. “Professors of education frequently turn out to be very poor teachers. Professors of English never write very good novels.” But maybe one sociology professor can make her society a little better.
