Toni Little

Class of 2011
New Britain, CT

Major: Creative Writing

Favorite weekend activity: Meeting new people, walking outside

Career Plans: Going to graduate school and being a literacy specialist

"These experiences [with Break Away and learning about hunger issues] have pushed me out of my bubble while allowing me to grow and mold myself into a better person.”

“Change” is a word that Toni Little uses a lot in describing her own development as a person since coming to Johnson State College. Being active and involved on campus has been a big part of that.

In her first three years at JSC, she has amassed an impressive list of activities and accomplishments: she’s been a resident assistant in Governors Hall (one of JSC’s on-campus residences); a student employee in the Admissions and Dean of Students Office; a member of the Dance Club; a National Scholarship recipient (one of only 107 nationwide); a JSC Dean’s List honoree; a Vermont governor’s award recipient (for her work organizing a student voter registration drive); a collaborator on a student-created anti-binge-drinking project supported by The Vermont Health Department and other agencies; and a co-organizer of the campus Take Back the Night event to raise awareness about sexual violence.  She also served as the Student Government Association vice-president for the 2009-2010 school year, where she and her fellow representatives focused on building participation and awareness about student government among the student body in general.

In 2010, Toni also traveled, for a second time, to New Orleans, as part of the Break Away alternative break service learning program. Her first trip was as a participant, but this time around she was a Break Away leader. She credits the program for being the catalyst to changing her way of viewing the world and inspiring her to live up to Ghandi’s famous statement: “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

Each year, Break Away participants choose a set of social issues to focus their efforts on. Toni explains, “Though I have been a part of Break Away for two years, and have changed because of it, I hadn't really understood how the each of the issues [such as homelessness, the environment, arts, etc.] connected with each other.”

Two recent experiences really made those connections clear to her. One was the IMPACT Conference in Little Rock, Arkansas, a conference for college students interested in service, activism and advocacy. In an April 15, 2010 Basement Medicine piece about the event, Toni writes that the experience made her ask some hard questions of herself. “While I know the work my group did in New Orleans was important, what am I doing to make a difference in my own community?” Specifically, she felt compelled to honestly look at how her own habits contributed to environmental problems and their consequences around the globe.

The other experience was JSC’s Hunger Banquet, sponsored by Oxfam America and Heifer International. The banquet highlights economic disparities across the globe by assigning banquet guests an economic status as they enter the room, and feeding them accordingly. As Toni writes, “As I took my seat on the floor where low-income people sat, I looked around to notice more than half of the banquet sat with me. . . . As the wealthy class was served, we were left to fend for a cup of rice and a dirty cup of water.”

The event brought her awareness of global poverty and how the high standard of living in the United States is related to it. But, more painfully, she explains, “It brought me back to my childhood, growing up in poverty and made me realize that some time while living in foster care and coming to college I lost sight of where I came from and stopped appreciating the world I had. It was a very emotional experience for me but an amazing one.” The experience was so powerful that this year Toni will be helping to plan the JSC banquet.

These experiences, she says, have “pushed me out of my bubble while allowing me to grow and mold myself into a better person.” A process which, as her typically ambitious plans for the upcoming school year demonstrate, Toni is clearly committed to continuing.