by Marci Wolfish | @WolfAndAFish
Walking around Brookline a couple of days ago, enjoying the beautiful fall weather and some hot cider, I started thinking about how much I love it here and what makes me love Boston (and every other place I feel is a home). The conclusion I arrived at is community. Feeling like I am part of a community is the determining factor for me. When I think back to all of the most important and best aspects of my life, past and present, it all boils down to community. The girls I played soccer with in high school, my high school art class, my soccer camp, my family, my sorority, my high school, my college, and my best friends are just a selection from a laundry list of examples.
When I was in middle and high school, I attended the Julie Foudy Sports Leadership Camp. At the end of my last year there I was awarded the “Inspirational Camper” award. While I can’t remember most of the speech given because I didn’t realize they were even talking about me until the end of the speech, I do remember hearing, “Not only is this camper service-minded, but she is incredibly community-minded.” Community-mindedness was never something I had thought of as a character trait previously, but this sparked an awareness in me that has guided my endeavors at a more conscious level ever since.
When I say that I think the key to solving most issues in building a strong community, I’m not trying to make a brash umbrella statement that makes me sound foolish. I just think that being a part of any sort of community improves quality of life.
This semester, I’m taking an introductory sociology course, which, in general, I am uninterested in, but it fills a graduation requirement. So here I was trying to make the most of learning about the fathers of sociology and growing frustrated with “theoretical sociologists” who thought up societal problems and never took any action because it was only theoretical until we arrived at the subject of deviance and crime. The Broken Windows Theory was first introduced in 1982 by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling. Essentially, this theory that suggests that when people feel ownership over a community, crime rates will be lower:
“Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it’s unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside. Or consider a pavement. Some litter accumulates. Soon, more litter accumulates. Eventually, people even start leaving bags of refuse from take-out restaurants there or even break into cars.”
Philip Zimbardo, a psychologist from Stanford, tested this theory by placing an abandoned car with no license plates in Palo Alto, CA and in the Bronx, NY. He found that the car in Bronx was vandalized and parts were removed almost immediately, while the car in Palo Alto was untouched for over a week. Zimbardo and many criminologists draw from this theory the importance of keeping up with maintenance of towns, cities; but what I took from this theory and experiment is that when people feel that they are outsiders for one reason or another, they are less likely to care about a community, which results in actions that are destructive or “socially deviant.”
My suggestion? We keep moving forward and working on finding ways to connect people and creating communities. It can be anything, the possibilities are endless. I can say with certainty that I am the most productive when I feel connected to a community, because it inspires me to care more, to do whatever I can to make tomorrow better for everyone.
When I was a senior in high school, I was the editor of the yearbook. In previous years, a small portion of the book was in color and the rest was black and white. With the help of my co-editor and two advisors, we were able to produce the first full-color yearbook in the Kent Place history. We put in incredible efforts to make this book the best it could be and lay out groundwork for the future generations to continue making improvements. It would be easy to say that we worked in vain — after all, all of those panic attacks and long hours seem irrelevant two years later. But that would be a naïve assumption. I was able to see portions of the following year’s book when it was still in process and I beamed with pride as I noticed how they were able to continue our legacy and take the book exactly where we wanted to see it go. But why did and does this matter so much to me? I don’t go there any more. That portion of my life is over, I recognize that. But the Kent Place community is still something that is mine, is important to me, and something I will always be a part of. I attribute so much of who I am as a person to my experiences there. The betterment of Kent Place is important to me so that the girls and faculty still there and those who will be in the future can benefit. To me, that is the essence of a community.
“A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” -Greek Proverb
The desire to make improvements is a key side effect of a community and the stronger the sense of community is, the more likely a person is to actually take action rather than just talk about doing something.
The communities I have found myself in at BU are incredible. Never have I spent so much time plotting and taking action on ways to make a difference. The best example I can use is the BU Hip-Hop Club. I have only been involved with this group since the beginning of September and already these are the people I look forward to seeing the most. My original reason for joining the group was to find more people who love hip-hop, mostly so I wouldn’t end up not going to shows because I didn’t want to go alone. I was hesitant to go to the first cypher because I don’t rap, but I’m glad that didn’t stop me. I had no idea that I was going to find so much more. A sense of community radiates from this group so strongly that it only takes one moment of true observation to see, and another moment to feel. That was the original intention of the group, to create a community of people passionate about hip-hop. On the surface, we have weekly cyphers outside of the GSU on Wednesdays at 5 and we have a Facebook group where people post links to new music and have conversations about hip-hop. There is more beneath that, though. The benefits of being part of a community like this come organically. While hip-hop is what brings us all together, that’s not all we are. Like I said, I have only been involved with this group for about two months, but when I think about the relationships I have already built with so many of the others involved, it seems hard to believe it’s only been that long. The inspiration and confidence that I get from surrounding myself with people who are so driven and positive (not only with hip-hop but in all other facets of their lives) is something noteworthy. I figured this out very early on. I was doing homework with two guys from the group, and the Game Show Network tweeted at me after I mentioned them in a [what I think was a funny] tweet. As we talked about how certain companies and figures use twitter so well, I said, “Yeah, if I ever become a big shot that will be really important to me to keep up with.” They both looked at me funny and I couldn’t figure out what I had said that was wrong. Then one of them said, “What do you mean ‘if’?” I smiled. “Oops, I mean when I become a big shot!” This story epitomizes the spirit of BU Hip-Hop. The positivity is infectious.
BU Hip-Hop is merely one community I feel connected to at Boston University and in Boston, there are several other that are just as meaningful, but for fear of over-writing, I’m going to ask that you take my word for it.
Again, because I feel a connection to this community and a sense of belongingness, I have that extra motivation to progress and work towards future innovation. I feel a sense of indebtedness, minus the negative connotation. Like I owe to it those who came before me to make room for those who will come after. I feel a duty to pay it forward and help create something special.
The more I understand what a strong community can bring out in individuals, the more important it becomes to me to strive to help build up those communities and help others build more.
I know it’s corny to end this with a quote, but being that Kurt Vonnegut is a famous author and all, I think his words may just be valuable, “What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.”
I challenge you to be daring, to go out and put more energy and appreciation into existing communities and build communities that may not already exist, and in being community-minded, you will also be future-minded. In my mind, the future can only be better.
wolfandafish 