Homeless endangered by apathy
COMMENTARY
John Dony

It might just be that I’ve been called a coward by one of them or it might even just be that some of us highly suspect that the one on a bike carries a loaded pistol, but recently, I’ve become frightened by some of the Evanston, Ill., homeless.

OK, let’s step back from that statement for a moment. What I did not say was that I believe all homeless people are inherently scary. What I did not say was that I disregard the hardships of not having a home while I sit in my ivory tower attending an upper-tier university. What I said was that I’ve become frightened by some of Evanston’s homeless people.

When I was growing up in the Illinois suburbs, not an hour away from Evanston, there existed exactly one homeless man. He was named Skippy, and he was widely regarded as a village idiot. I remember being 7 and believing that he was affiliated with a traveling circus because that’s what he told me.

There are no Skippys in Evanston. Instead, there seem to be two groups prevalent in town: the apathetic and the mean.

The apathetic homeless will not talk to you, but will instead rattle their cups of change and maybe watch you walking down the street. The mean homeless will start out asking you if they can ask you a question and then proceed down their own bizarre chain of logic until you’ve been informed that you’re the scum of the planet.

The problem is that homelessness is a mobius strip — without happy-go-lucky sorts like Skippy, people become apathetic about the homeless, and this apathy only turns the cycle.

All I can say is that maybe Northwestern should bring back the circus of ‘20s and ‘30s yore.

Because Evanston needs a Skippy.

John Dony is a columnist at the Daily Northwestern at Northwestern University. This column was distributed by U-Wire.