Audio: Zachary Reynolds (’14) Reflects on the Walk for Life West Coast

Having recently returned from the Walk for Life West Coast, senior Zachary Reynolds took part in an interview earlier this week with From the Median Radio in Cleveland. Mr. Reynolds, who led more than 200 of his fellow students to the Bay Area for the Walk, discussed the group’s motivations for participating in the event, echoing on an article he wrote about the subject last year. His appearance followed that of his classmate, Sarah Dufresne (’14), who was a guest on From the Median before the Walk.

“We go up there with an attitude of service, that we are there in order to help the directors of the Walk for Life and that we are there to serve in whatever capacity,” Mr. Reynolds told host Molly Smith. “For some students, that means that after the Walk is over, they spend hours standing on a sidewalk directing traffic in order to help people go across the busy streets of San Francisco. That’s not something that is easy to do. It’s not something that’s convenient for them. But it’s something that they choose to do because they have a conviction that breeds action.”

The students’ conviction to the pro-life cause, Mr. Reynolds explained, is due in no small part to the ability they develop in the College’s classrooms to analyze an issue critically. “We hold this position because we have thought about it, because we have looked at it, because we have considered it. And once we have done that, we should be able to look at it and say, ‘I believe this, or I am convicted in this way, in such a manner that I am willing to act out on it … because it is right, and it is true, and therefore worthy of our effort.”

Additionally, Mr. Reynolds credited the College’s refusal to sponsor the Walk with shoring up students’ enthusiasm; that is, ensuring that joining the Walk be an act of conviction, not compulsion, or merely following the crowd. “This is an event that the College fully endorses — they love the fact that we do it — but they want us to be doing it because the motivation has to come first within ourselves, and because they don’t want to distract us from the education that is going on at the school,” he said. “Therefore it is not a universal or an overall push for pro-life work that the school does, but rather a simple nod of the head, a kind of sanctioning this event, in isolation, as a taste of what we will be able to do upon leaving the school.”