Blog #2
Freshman residence halls are usually overrun with posters, flyers, and white boards with various notes scribbled all over. The second year residence halls have a completely different tone. After the chaos of the first year experience, filled with anxiety and a need to find friends and a sense of “home”, ends, the second year residence halls reflect a much more mature and realistic atmosphere. No longer do students write on each other’s whiteboards, nor do the floor residents hang out together all the time. Once the madness of fulfilling one’s drive to have other students around incessantly to ease his personal transition into a new environment ends, reality begins. The sense of community only exists when the students feel vulnerable and desire their peers to validate their existence. As soon as everyone has made their own friends and is no longer adapting to an unfamiliar environment, the sense of community disappears.
In the penthouse suite of Clarke Tower, where I reside, there are two posters. One is a message asking us to thank housing keeping for doing such an amazing job, and there is space on the poster to sign our names, and the other is asking for drivers for a trip to the Cleveland Zoo. These two posters hardly compare to a wall completely covered with various information and messages. According to Rebekah Nathan in “My Freshman Year, “The value placed on fun was evident in many forms on student doors in the images and words that were selected for public viewing”. Nathan does agree the freshman dorms advocate a “fun” atmosphere, but in this article, she fails to realize the drastic change in the upper class residence halls. The walls in my hallway, for the most part, are bare, and the common areas are usually empty as well. This reflects a melancholy environment with a lack of unity. For instance, I only know five people on my floor, and I have talked to my RA one time when she was obliged to take a census. Thus, I would not say that the writing on my walls reflects a sense of unity or fun; in fact, it accurately displays a sense of detachment. If one were to solely analyze my residence hall, they would, most likely, conclude that Case lacks a sense of community.
The student life at Case is not one of community or companionship. It is one of intense study and competition. Once the initial weeks of stress have subsided, most become attached to their group of friends, and forget about all of the friends and sense of community that they had previously experienced. I do not reflect on this as being negative because it is realistic. In the real world, everyone is not friendly with everyone, and most return to the world in which they have created to suite their own needs. The Buddha wisely proclaimed, “We are not independent but interdependent." 1 Perhaps, even though this lack of community is reality, it is an enormous flaw in society that projects itself in all aspects of life.
1 Kornfield, Jack, Buddha’s Little Instruction Book. Bantam Books: New York, 1994.
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