Young leader eyes peaceful resolutions

In these unsettled times, when our world seems to be wobbling on its axis, we can be grateful for any small ray of hope that passes through our lives.

I met one the other day in the person of a University of Maine senior named Corinne Whitling, who can’t wait to start making our anxious planet into a better place to live. She’s committed to a career in conflict resolution, in helping others negotiate their way peacefully through difficulties. Though still largely unfocused about the best way to achieve her goals, she’s filled with an exuberant youthful idealism for the future. At 22, she’s mature enough to understand that no one person can change the world alone. So Whitling hopes to channel her energies into the community, where conflicts tend to be of a more manageable scale.

Whitling was just a kid in Portland when she first felt the urge to try her hand at resolving conflicts. She wanted to help people find ways to solve problems without angry confrontation. She needed an outlet. As a 15-year-old student at Deering High School, she found it in a new program that trained students to become peer mediators. The work was so satisfying that she expanded it into a position with Youth Alternative, a Portland community action program, where she helped mediate family conflicts.

“The more I did the more I wanted to get out there and help people find alternative ways to resolve their disputes,” said Whitling, a sociology major with a concentration in peace studies. She works as a coordinator for the campus mediation program. Last month, Whitling took her commitment to a higher level by attending a symposium sponsored by the International Institute for Mediation and Conflict Resolution at The Hague, Netherlands. There, with 90 other students from 30 countries, she immersed herself in lectures and training exercises involving conflicts in the community, international negotiations, boundary disputes, and such global issues as environmental pollution. By having to represent nations other than her own during negotiations, and working with others to find solutions that were fair to all, Whitling learned one of the biggest lessons of her young life.

“Being from the U.S. doesn’t mean we can solve everyone’s problems for them,” she said. “Western idealism isn’t always the answer.”

Not long after she returned to campus, the terrorist attacks suddenly created a world conflict so enormous that it continues to defy any mutually agreeable resolution. Whitling’s fellow students now are as divided as the rest of us about what to do. There are the extreme factions: Those who want to “bomb them all, and let God sort them out,” and those who would simply prefer to turn the other cheek.

“Then there’s the huge clump in the middle, who don’t know what the solution is,” Whitling said. “I’m in that group. I’m scared to think that so many more innocent people will die. I feel a sense of helplessness. But it has also motivated me to try to make changes in my community, to make sure we don’t completely lose ourselves in that sense of retaliation.”

That’s the refreshing part, the ray of hope. Whereas so many Americans see only anxiety and despair in the days to come, there are the dedicated future leaders like Whitling who see an opportunity to act.

“Because this will be part of our lives for a long time, we can’t just sit back and wait for what happens,” she said. “We need to talk more on campus and in our communities about what’s going on, about our feelings as events unfold. We have to raise questions every step of the way, bring in opposing viewpoints, and try to educate ourselves about the bigger world and how we got to this point.”

In the meantime, Whitling is

doing what she can to resolve conflict on a smaller scale. Through Penquis CAP, she is working with Bangor teens to establish an activities center where young people can meet, play music, discuss issues that matter to them, and stay out of trouble.

“I don’t know exactly where my career will take me,” she said. “But if you want to make a difference in times like these, the community is a good place to start.”

Tom Weber’s column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.