Community Building at BU: Community Spaces or Community Decisions

When the Boston Herald reported on June 19^th that Boston University bought three streets from the city, I chose not to comment on the decision. While I served in the Boston University Student Union I would have spent hours discussing the purchase, but after graduation it seems relatively unimportant. Although I absolutely intend to maintain a connection to my alma mater, I must focus on my post-college life. So I just read the article, and continued with my life.

However, on Friday the BU Quad published an article about the purchase that included a tweet of mine. The tweet is quoted out of context, completely changing its meaning. I had only intended to ask a respected friend to explain her opposition to the decision, but the author misconstrued the tweet as a comment on the purchase itself. The result not only creates an impression that I support the purchase, but also trivializes student concerns about administrative decisions. This directly contradicts everything I struggled to achieve in student government. Therefore, I feel obligated to provide my actual thoughts on the purchase.

The administration has justified the purchase as a step to strengthen the “community feeling” at Boston University. I agree that building a stronger community should be a high priority for the administration. During my time in Student Union, I constantly heard complaints about the deficiencies of the community. I could write pages about the negative effects that the weak community has on students at Boston University, but for now I will just say that I believe that it affects every aspect of life at Boston University.

That said, I believe this decision is misguided at best, and counterproductive at worst. The administration plans to convert Blandford, Cummington, and Hinsdale streets into a pedestrian mall, which will provide an open space for social interaction and community activities. Apparently, the administration believes that this pedestrian mall will build a sense of community by creating a new space for socializing and community activities.

I believe this approach betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the challenge facing the Boston University community. It seems to misidentify the source of the weak community spirit it seeks to address. Four elements contribute to a “sense of community”: membership, influence, fulfillment of needs, and shared emotional connection. This purchase presumes that the Boston University community is weak because it has too few spaces for social interaction and too few community activities. In fact, Boston University suffers from an overabundance of opportunities. BU offers an overwhelming variety of academic, extracurricular, and social opportunities to students. Students are constantly bombarded by a dizzying array of events and activities. Students cope by joining subcommunities organized around their own interest. Each of these subcommunities pursues separate activities, organizes separate events, and promotes socialization among its own members. This fragmentation weakens the general community by robbing students of shared experiences. Converting Blandford, Cummington, and Hinsdale streets into a pedestrian mall will not resolve this issue. In fact, by creating a new social space that competes with the BU Beach it may further fragment the community.

However, the existence of these subcommunities need not weaken the general community as much as they do now. These subcommunities become a problem because students have little influence over many of the decisions that profoundly shape the whole community. Communities are built on trust; they form when a group of people decide that they trust each other enough to risk their time, resources, and safety by interacting on a regular basis. This trust requires that community members have some influence over decisions regarding collective resources. If community members have no voice in the discussion about allocating collective resources, they become understandably reluctant to invest their resources, time, and emotional energy into the community; instead, they withdraw into smaller groups that do afford them influence. This process is already at work, weakening the BU community. Students as a whole are rarely informed of very important discussions about the future of the university, let alone given a chance to participate in those discussions. Whenever students attempt to participate in anything more substantial than organizing an event, administrators consistently respond that Boston University is a private institution and students are free to leave at any time. Students may not leave because of this attitude, but they do retreat to the places they can influence – their subcommunities. This retreat into subcommunities fragments the Boston University community. Therefore, the weak sense of community can only be addressed by convincing students that they can influence the general community. Unfortunately, this purchase emphasizes that students have very little influence over the decisions of made for their community.

In the future, I recommend that the administration focus their community building efforts on empowering students to act as engaged members of the BU community. I would start by personally communicating with students that express anger about the purchase. No matter the cause, anger should be addressed before it becomes a problem. Unresolved anger generates resentment, which absolutely undermines community spirit. I would continue with a mass outreach to allow the student body to shape the future use of this pedestrian mall. By offering students a chance to name or decorate the new space, the administration can give students a common experience that emphasizes their ability to influence their community.

In the long run, the administration must create mechanisms to substantially include students in university decisions. It is important that students sit on committees that make decisions about the community. Still, committee seats are not sufficient to empower students to influence university decisions. Student government already appoints representatives to committees, and these appointments have failed to significantly increase student knowledge of and participation in university decisions. Historically, three factors have undermined the effectiveness of student representatives on university committees. First, appointees come from a relatively narrow section of the student body. Second, appointees begin their short terms with no knowledge or experience of the committee’s work. Third, appointees are not required to communicate with the student body. Before appointing any students to committee seats for the coming year, student government should be required to provide plans to advertise seats throughout the student body, prepare appointees to participate in the committee, and establish an ongoing conversation between the appointees and the student body they represent. These reforms will allow students to participate meaningfully in major university decisions.

            I recognize that Boston University has improved in many ways over the past decade. Students undeniably have a better position at the university now than they did ten years ago. I recognize this progress, but I am more concerned about the future. We live in an era with a weak economy and intense competition: institutions of higher education must do more with limited resources. I believe that future progress will require that the Boston University community unite to use its resources as effectively as possible. Events like this purchase should be used as opportunities to create collaboration between students and administrators that will ensure that Boston University remains one of the greatest universities in the world.

African Festival of Boston

If you visited City Hall Plaza on Saturday, you would have seen the African Festival of Boston. Since 2010, the Shalupe Foundation has organized the festival as an annual celebration of African culture and community. From 8:00AM to 8:00PM, music, food, and African vendors drew a substantial crowd to the plaza. You could not have missed it.

You mostly likely would have missed me, though. I recently committed to volunteering once a week, but I have not yet found an organization that suits me. When I received an email from the Shalupe Foundation looking for volunteers, I offered my afternoon and evening to volunteer at the festival. I thought it would be a good way to spend my Saturday.

Unfortunately, this was one of my worst volunteer experiences ever. I am not a picky volunteer: I will do things I hate as long as I am busy and helpful. Yesterday, I was neither. I arrived just past four in the afternoon, and I stayed until just after nine at night to help break down the tables. During most of that time, I sat behind a table protecting t-shirts. Guard duty is not a satisfying volunteer activity, even if you are protecting really nice t-shirts. Soon enough, I wanted the event to end just so I could help move tables and chairs. The experience would have been a complete disappointment if it were not for the organizer. She was nice enough that I could suffer the heat and boredom.

She did give me a chance to explore the event itself. The center of the event was performance art. Throughout the day, African musicians represented their countries with music, poetry, and dance. Although the size of the audience varied throughout the day, it always seemed happy with the event.

Crowd watching a performance in the late afternoon.

The rest of the plaza was covered in tents for African vendors and community organizations. The vendors offered a wide variety of clothes, jewelry, art, and food in African styles. Walking among the vendors may be as close as I ever get to visiting an authentic African bazaar.

Tents streching across the plaza.

I must admit that I was disappointed that the festival did not present the history and culture of Africa more substantially. I understand that the festival focused on showcasing the work of African artists, but I think the event could have benefitted from a more substantial exploration of the continent. Africa is the birthplace of the human race, but many Americans know virtually nothing about the continent. By delving into the history of the continent, the festival could have offered an experience that attendees could not have received anywhere else. Not only would this draw a larger crowd to the artists displaying their work, but it also would have made the experience of African art more meaningful. When you understand the historical and cultural context of a piece of art, it transforms from an aesthetically pleasing object into an expression of the human spirit that produced it.

I would suggest that the organizers add a historical presentation on the plaza to the next festival. It seemed to me that the event emphasized the unity of African national communities and the diversity of African culture. A presentation about the development of modern African states from diverse African peoples would reinforce both themes. It would center around a map of the continent, showing the cultural groups on the continent and the date of independence for each country. Presenters would explain the transition from separate ethnic groups to modern countries. Each country represented at the festival would also receive a timeline of its major historical events. After talking about the history of the countries, presenters would direct visitors to vendors and performers to learn more about the culture of each country. This presentation would unite the various vendors and performances into one exploration of the African continent.

Such a presentation would require a great deal of knowledge, so I would recommend that the Shalupe Foundation approach nearby universities for support. The academic partner would consult on the development of the presentation, and provide presenters during the day. African studies programs at Harvard University, Boston College, or the University of Massachusetts Boston could support the historical presentation. However, I would recommend the very active Boston University African Studies Center, which included the festival on its calendar.

I would also have loved to see a traditional storyteller tell an African folktale on stage. Traditional storytelling is an amazing art that most people in the modern world never experience. It requires a storyteller to captivate an audience without the script, complicated props, cast, and editing that even low budget movies use today. Instead, the storyteller must rely on a craft honed over thousands of years, and a story. African folktales offer great stories as well. I admit that I have only heard a few African folktales, but they were all very entertaining. They were also very different from the Greco-Roman myths that I know well. It would be both entertaining and enlightening to watch a traditional storyteller share African folktales.

It also would have been nice to have  a station for people to learn from African artists. I was impressed by the style of the art on display, and I would have liked to learn from similar artists. An art station might have also entertained the restless children in the crowd. Believe me, entertainment for children was desperately needed at the festival. (One child was so bored that he spent 20 minutes trying to fight me.)

I will definitely visit the African Festival of Boston again next year, but I will probably not again. Next time, I will just go to learn about Africa. I will just talk to the vendors, listen to the music, and eat the food. It seemed to work for the crowd.

 Enthusiastic man dancing in 90 degree heat.