Students will sponsor underprivileged children from SMU’s Inter-Community Experience Center Sunday at the 25th Annual Celebration of Lights. It’s been a tradition for SMU to beautify itself with thousands of little white lights that glisten every year at Christmas time. While uniting faculty, students, staff and anyone else who wants to go, it also builds an atmosphere of peace and happiness among the spectators.
For the past six years, the ICE Center has beeen bringing children from low-income, multi-ethnic East Dallas neighborhoods to the celebration.
These children have been tutored diligently by SMU students for the past school year in hope that they will grasp the importance of an education, and realize that college is not an impossible goal.
Bruce Levy, ICE Center director and English professor, believes the event is a wonderful way to end the semester, both for the kids as well as for the SMU students.
“These kids live so close to SMU but in a lot of ways it could be a 1,000 miles away,” said Levy. “SMU is a great opportunity for these kids, and this opens up possibilities for them.”
Students who are taking urban studies classes tutor and organize enrichment activities for children who attend Robert E. Lee Elementary School. The ICE program has had an incredible impact not only on the children and parents who live in East Dallas but also on the SMU students who are actively involved in their lives.
On Sunday these children will join the SMU community as it gathers together to sing and admire the beauty of Christmas. In addition to the celebration, SMU students who participate in the program sponsor a child and buy them gifts.
Kim Celoni, a junior finance major, helped coordinate last year’s event. Celoni enjoyed working with the children.
“It was wonderful to watch these kids experience Christmas,” Celoni said. “Some of the kids had never even seen Santa before so it was a joy to watch them experience activites that we take for granted.”
Chaplain William Finnin is one of the original organizers of the ICE program, which Dedman College initiated in 1991. The ICE program originally was an idea introduced in 1989 by an undergraduate SMU student, Chris Lake.
Lake was serving an internship with Habitat for Humanity in Garrett Park East when he realized he really wanted to confront the forces that tend to limit the potential within inner-city residents to envision a productive future. Finnin and Lake drafted a plan which Dedman College soon instigated as ICE.
“Bringing the children to the Celebration of Lights makes ICE more than just a program. It gives it a warmth and familiarity that is rarely found in institutions of its kind,” Finnin said. “ICE surpasses simply teaching by showing the bright side of becoming a member of a scholastic society.”
Finnin also said that the children really enjoy the experience.
“It’s a fun time for these kids,” said Finnin, “It’s a way for these kids to connect to SMU on a very special occasion.”
