Community in College?
From an interview with an anthropology professor who went undercover as a student at her university:
What does “community” mean to the students you talked to?
I saw a much more individualized version of community. For most people who said
, “I’ve got community here,” it was the five people they hang out with. And that really becomes their university.
You can see that in the kinds of housing that students are attracted to. The old dorms are built according to the “big community” idea, with huge lobbies furnished with big overstuffed chairs, three TVs in giant rooms. But nobody is using them! People are going to an off-campus apartment to visit friends, or they’re all congregating in one person’s room. At my university we have one dorm with a waiting list, and of course this dorm has big suites, four rooms with a living room, washer and dryer, bathroom. It’s like an apartment with everything there. Students only ever have to interact with three or four other people.
I talk about the time my dorm had a big Super Bowl party and only a handful of people attended. Everybody else was sitting alone or with one or two other friends in their own rooms, watching the game.
This bodes ill for community/group dancing…unless there’s a backlash as these kids get older and decide maybe a larger community is a good thing.