Form a Tighter Community

By Chris Barber, Eric Brittain,
Greg Brodsky, Brian Edwards-Tiekert,
Mina Halpern, Christina Kishimoto,
Evan Leonard, Sara Mason,
and Michael Whaley

You’ve probably noticed some problems facing student activities on campus: we’re fragmented, we don’t communicate that well, we only band together when we’re fighting something. We accidentally schedule events in conflict with each other. We tackle the same issues independently when we should be working together. Most of us don’t have access to the spaces we need, whether they be rehearsal room or offices. Our most experienced members have the unfortunate habit of graduating. We’re constantly trying to figure out how to recruit new people, how to train and educate them, how to remain true to our missions and commitments. Meetings run too damn long and usually don’t get enough done. We don’t have time for half the things we do, but we do them anyway.

The Committee on Community Leadership and Learning is a student initiated task force for the purpose of exploring these problems and building the capacity in the community to solve them. We are students, administrators, and faculty. We realize there are two sources of our problems. First, the community lacks the necessary resources, space, infrastructure, and effective coordination of our activities. Second, in the way that we work together, there is often fragmentation, discrimination, a lack of learning from experience, and difficulty in fulfilling the purpose that we set out with.

There have been sporadic efforts in the past few years to look at Wesleyan’s issues with space, resources, and infrastructure for community activities, and there have also been sporadic efforts to look at such issues as fragmentation, discrimination, leading, and learning. But this is the first time a group of people are making a significant effort to address the issues of the community as a whole. This is an effort to learn about our problems and do something about them.

Wesleyan has been making plans for its academics, finances, and facilities for years. Now it is time to plan for the community.

So tell us: What do you need? What do you want? What do you dream of? What are the specific problems facing the community or facing your student group, and how can they be resolved? What problems do you see facing all student activism on campus? Most importantly, what can we do about them?

Imagine a Center for Community Leadership and Learning, with the space we need, and the staff to help us be successful. How would this Center help us? Ideas, questions, comments? Please email Chris Barber at cbarber@wesleyan.edu or call x5137.

Brodsky and Kishimoto are members of the class of 1999. Barber, Edwards-Tiekert, Leonard, and Mason are members of the class of 2000. Halpern is a member of the class of 2002. Whaley is the Dean of Student Services. Brittain is an intern working with Whaley.