How will you spend your Thanksgiving break?
Gallatin senior Sami Feld never really made it her point to be influential. No — she was just doing what's natural. See, there are problems at NYU. And Sami's just the right woman to fix them.
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She probably wouldn't say that about herself. She was modest when I met her; she even seemed a little bewildered to be on this list. Sometimes, people who do as much as Sami does are inaccessible. Hard to talk to. Not Sami. She's approachable. Even her name is easygoing.
"I tried to go with the 'Samantha' thing," she said, quickly adding that it just didn't work.
Sami shouldn't be modest at all. In her three and a half years at NYU, she has had an impact on the lives of many people.
Ask the incoming freshmen who met her when she worked as a leader for Project OutReach, the service program that introduces new students to the NYU and New York City service worlds. Sami was an OutReach participant her freshman year, and she said the program truly helped her adjust and see what the city had to offer.
Or ask some of the people who nominated her for this list — like the friend who called her the ideal NYU student: "Sami ... thinks of others before herself and maintains a sense of passion and optimism in all of her endeavors."
And Sami's certainly affected a large number of the city's homeless. In her freshman year, she helped found Two Birds, One Stone, an NYU club that collects leftover food from dining halls every weekday night. Student volunteers bring the food to local soup kitchens and community programs. The program has a regular base of 40 to 50 volunteers, Sami said — huge for an NYU club.
Sami seems to be comfortable in all of her roles. Or maybe it's just that she's not scared of new things. I asked her to meet me someplace comfortable for her, and she chose the new Think Coffee on Fourth Avenue, which she's never been to. Maybe that's where she's most comfortable: unfamiliar places. That helps explain her love for travel, a love she said has developed with each country she visits.
"The more places I've been, the more places I've wanted to go," she said.
Sami's first trip abroad was when she was 12, and her family went on a Habitat for Humanity trip to Guyana, a country in South America. She returned home to Northern California's Bay Area, but it wasn't the last time she'd travel before college. For birthdays or Hannukahs, Sami would ask her grandmother, a travel lover, to give her trips as presents. Sami calls those trips "the biggest gift in the entire universe."
That traveling continued at NYU. Her junior year she studied abroad with the International Honors Program, an organization that helps students visit several different countries to learn about other cultures and to work on independent research projects.
The IHP program was how Sami met Josh Fattal, who served as a mentor and organizer of sorts for students in the program. Sami was drawn to Josh's caring personality.
"He filled so many roles, that of teacher, that of mentor," Sami said. "My grandmother actually passed away while I was abroad, and he was a source of comfort; he was a friend."
So in late summer when Sami learned that Fattal and two of his friends, Sarah Shourd and Shane Bauer, were being detained in Iran (for inadvertently entering the country without visas while hiking in the area), she said she was terrified.
"It's hard to wrap my head around the situation," Sami said. For the first couple of months after the hikers were detained, Sami said she "felt totally useless and powerless to do anything."
But she found a way to channel her fear and emotion into something powerful. Sami hasn't been content to simply sit and wait during Josh's saga; she's deeply involved with the Free the Hikers campaign, formed by the hikers' family members in an effort to help free their loved ones.
The stress of college life would be enough work for some. Why does Sami devote time to work to help Josh?
"Because I can," she said. It's just that obvious to her. "I know he would be actively doing something if this were one of his friends."
Sami is a true Good Samaritan. When she sees a problem, she doesn't turn the other cheek. She helps, and she helps without asking for any thanks. For her, it's natural.
"I couldn't not," she said simply.
