|
The Decline of Community by Jean Lecuyer, Physical Science Division |
|||
|
How often do you have lunch with a faculty member from another division, or even from your own division? How many people do you know personally outside your division? How involved are you in campus organizations? |
|||
|
|
|||
|
If your answers are "rarely,” “very few" and "not that much," you may be missing a lot. But you may also be rather typical of your faculty colleagues. The college has not
always been like this. Twenty-six years ago when I Granted, we have increased in numbers in the past twenty years, but not that much. We are still fewer than three hundred full-timers. What is happening, I believe, is that we are losing our sense of community. We are becoming more individualistic, more anonymous, more fragmented, and that is not good for the college, or ultimately for us either. You might object that I make too much out of the demise of the faculty dining room, that the new dining facilities are not all that inviting, that people just prefer eating in surrounding restaurants, that anyway, with e-mail now, we have a virtual community that makes these lunches unnecessary. These are good points but they don't tell the whole story. For one thing, the demise of the faculty dining room preceded the Campus Center remodeling by many years. For another, apart from the Friday luncheons of the math division and Yeimei's weekly feasts, I don't know of any other faculty table anywhere around. Perhaps there are some: if so, please make it known; some of us would like to join! As for e-mail, it is wonderful, and it does create a sense of community to some extent, but it is limited. As in education, the computer screen does not replace face-to-face interactions. I do, however, agree on the quality of the dining facilities: the faculty dining room was never that inviting, but the remodeling made it worse. It's as if it has been forgotten—it's more barren than before, but with the same old wobbly tables. And then the cafeteria has been turned into little more than another fast food outlet. Even Judy Razze’s creative announcements don't draw much faculty clientele there. That is a shame. In many institutions, faculty dining rooms play a vital role in maintaining the sense of community on campus; they are truly wonderful places to meet colleagues and enjoy their company, to discuss issues and exchange ideas, and to keep up with campus life. I challenge the administration to create a really pleasant and attractive dining room, and the faculty to make it again the vital community center that it was twenty years ago. In the meantime, I encourage everyone to take advantage of Yeimei's great lunches. There should never be an unsold ticket: the food is outstanding, the service is exceptional, the hostess is charming, and it's a great way to meet colleagues. Another way is to get yourself an invitation to join the math division lunches on Fridays. The mathematicians form perhaps the most involved and the most community-minded division on campus. They are quite admirable in that respect. Their lunches are lively and enjoyable. I only wish there were lunches like that every day of the week. & |
started working
here, the faculty dining room was a very vibrant place. Every day at
noon one could find three or four tables of faculty members having lunch
there. The discussions were lively and interesting, and for a young
teacher like me these lunches were precious: they put me in contact with
a wide variety of colleagues from almost every discipline. Six years
later, when I became president of the Academic Senate, I knew personally
almost every faculty member on campus. How many of you, faculty
readers, can claim the same thing nowadays?