CRESP and Webber focus on community and on social justice

Mary Webber, left, director of the Center for Religion, Ethics and Social Policy (CRESP), and Liz Walker, director of EcoVillage at Ithaca, meet in the CRESP office. EcoVillage, a model sustainable village in the town of Ithaca, is one of the projects supported by CRESP. Sheryl Sinkow/University Photography

By Paul Cody

Born more than a quarter century ago out of the ferment of the 1960s, Cornell's Center for Religion, Ethics and Social Policy (CRESP) tries to do some of the work "we're called to as people of faith," according to its director of three years, Mary Webber. And for Webber, a nurse, an Episcopalian, an administrator and a social activist, "the Gospels are about justice."

But according to a campus conservative publication, CRESP gives "socialism" a "shot in the arm" on campus. The charge delights Webber.

"We certainly help sustain the discussion and debate of social issues on campus," she said.

Inspired by people such as Cornell United Religious Work's the Rev. Daniel Berrigan and the Rev. Bill Gibson, CRESP began operation in July 1971. In the words of its first director, the Rev. John Lee Smith, CRESP's mission was to "perform an adversarial role in intelligently criticizing existing social policy." Such criticism, he said, "would proceed from moral concern and religious conviction," and CRESP would "be open to the entire community and encompass a wide range of moral positions and include a variety of religious commitments" for "educational purposes" in the "public interest."

With administrative offices located in two rooms in Anabel Taylor Hall, CRESP has an affiliation agreement with the university and has served as an umbrella for various community agencies that got their start at the center. The agencies include the Learning Web, which provides mentoring and educational and job training to more than 400 "at-risk" area teen-agers; the Displaced Homemakers Center, which helps divorced, widowed or needy women with job acquisition skills; and the Community Dispute Resolution Center, which helps arbitrate community disputes. CRESP's Multicultural Resource Center helps run training sessions for area groups on issues of race, class and gender. Over the years, programs on death and dying, art and spirituality, local food and agriculture and alternative communities all have been part of the center's mandate.

The projects CRESP now supports include EcoVillage, the Committee on U.S.-Latin American Relations (CUSLAR), the Durland Alternatives Library and a project called Seeds of Simplicity, which "develops curricula to assist families and schools in helping children resist consumer culture," according to CRESP literature. CRESP also supports Eco Partners, a program that takes groups of students to remote regions in the Dominican Republic to help build small hydroelectric power plants for villagers.

"We are particularly delighted to be engaged with students. We can provide meeting space and a pot of coffee," Webber said. "Sometimes we bring in speakers and organize workshops for them, but most of the time we just cheer them on."

Webber received her B.S. in nursing from Cornell in 1959 and worked as a community activist in St. Louis, where she was involved in programs that dealt with welfare reform, housing and job training. She was the founder and director of a St. Louis project, Dismantling Racism, which developed and ran anti-racism programs in St. Louis churches and colleges.

She returned to Ithaca three years ago with husband Bill, a retired professor of plastic surgery at the medical school at St. Louis University, to live at EcoVillage in the town of Ithaca, and she has three grown children.

Webber says she will continue to focus on what she sees as growing national and international economic inequities. In the United States, at present, 80 percent of the population has access to only 6 percent of the wealth, she points out.

"As an institution, Cornell is dedicated to educating and training the winners in our society," said Webber. "Through CRESP, Cornell puts some of its money and space and energy into addressing the concerns of those who have a much harder time becoming winners, and to issues such as the environment and racism, which are all too easy to ignore."