The Beauty of the White Board
In Rebekah Nathan’s "Life in the Dorms," Nathan claims that residential colleges lack a sense of community. The students that hang out aren’t necessarily in the same classes, and those that share the same interests aren’t housed together. This leads to a lack of bonding within the many small groups a person belongs to. I have found that this is generally not true here at Case Western. The students here find many ways to communicate with each other, my favorite being the white board.
White dry-erase boards can be found in many of the door as you walk around the floors of a residential building. They are one the easiest ways to get messages spread around the floor and get to know other people within your building. On any given day, one could find a mixture of inquiries about plans for later, jokes, discussions, anecdotes, and drawings. Some of the things you would find reflect the occupants’ of the room personalities.
Today I noticed that on my neighbors white board was a drawing of an elephant’s butt. I automatically realized what is was and where the general concept came from, while my roommate didn’t. I am in Chris Butler’s math class, where he regularly uses an “elephant’s butt” to represent “some stuff.” Now many of the people also recognized this drawing, also being in one of Prof. Butler’s classes. This type of inside joke due to a shared class builds the sense of “community” that Nathan finds lacking, without any of us sharing the same major that Nathan seems to imply that is necessary for it to exist. Now I will not claim to know everyone within my building, or even everyone on my floor, but I do know a nice percentage of the people. I can recognize at least one person everywhere I go.
Also I found a new topic to discuss with my neighbor through her white board. She wrote:
“The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep. “
I immediately realized that it was an excerpt from the Robert Frost poem, “Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening.” I wrote on her board that I too love the poem and poet. Later that day we discussed our love of poetry. So the white board helps to connect people. You don’t have to try that hard to find a common ground when using the board. Just write what you feel and more than likely a discussion of similar likes or a disagreement about a certain topic with someone on the floor. It can be a completely anonymous statement, you don’t have to say that you’re the one who wrote it. The white board has further increased the sense of community found on college campuses
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