Connecting the Cornell Network
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Slope Song
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Statler High. Architects in the Green Dragon. English majors in Temple of Zeus. The entire engineering quad. Athletes in Trillium. Greeks at Johnny O’s. Program Houses.
It’s said that Cornell is an incredibly fragmented campus. One explanation is that on a campus of 13,000 undergraduates, students have to find their niche, individual identities that make Cornell a little more manageable, a little less overwhelming. But at what point do those niches detract from the development of a campus-wide, self-identified and networked community of Cornellians?
Community-building is a constant challenge we each face throughout our four years at Cornell. With almost every member of the freshmen class living on North Campus, it is the closest example of a cohesive community, a microcosm of Cornell’s student body and incredibly diverse interests. Scenarios like an engineer from New Mexico rooming with an international agriculture and rural development major from Upstate New York are the norm. All freshmen share common experiences that are considered the milestones of college: meal after meal in dining halls, large lecture classes and their subsequently terrifying prelims and a randomized residential hall assignment. The Dean of Students office even has a satellite on North, the Carol Tatkon Center, to support and foster personal and community development. Freshman year is marked by a unifying, common experience.
The next three years at Cornell are a different story. The class splits up as students set out on a mission to find their places on campus — whether program houses, athletic teams, Greek chapters, extracurricular activities. Some find it on their first try, some on their fourth or fifth. As students search for their best fit over three years, a class isn’t united again until Senior Week, a week-long going-away party.
Honing your independence by making your own choices, while both challenging and exciting, is the signature experience of being a college student. It speaks of Cornell’s diversity of interests and offerings that so many communities, many radically different from the next, exist and thrive on campus. Those individual networks, however, are spread all over Cornell and its surrounding neighborhoods and lack the geographic intimacy of North Campus, making communication and mobility from one community to another difficult to maintain.
Building community doesn’t mean all of its members have one, uniform experience. The foundation of a community is a sense of shared identity and its success rests upon collaboration and communication between its members. Exploring new avenues of cooperation and information-sharing would not only strengthen each individual community, but the Cornell student body and its shared experience as a whole. We’re the Facebook Generation, guys — innovative networking is our thing.
Take the on-going Black Student Union-Hillel Katrina Initiative. The BSU and Hillel were separately organizing trips to New Orleans to help their communities after Hurricane Katrina. Leaders of the two organizations connected last spring, realizing together they could bring their message and cause — the rebirth and renewal of New Orleans — to a wider audience. While the two groups co-led a trip to New Orleans in August to help with the rebuilding effort, the trip was open to any member of the Cornell community, and students unaffiliated with either organization also participated. The trip fostered dialogue about not only Katrina and the societal issues it raised, but also conversations about the Cornell community and each individual’s experiences within it. Resulting from the Initiative is a series of on-campus, collaborative events that bring Katrina awareness to Cornell. The Initiative’s goal is to cooperate and use a wider variety of resources — such as the City and Regional Planning department and social justice organizations — to effect more change than either group could do on their own.
The BSU-Hillel Katrina Initiative is an example of student leaders of various organizations coming together to instigate change. Not only does the collaboration result in raised awareness of life in New Orleans post-Katrina, but it also fosters personal connections between students whose paths may not have otherwise crossed. We need more of these opportunities to connect and network on campus, creating avenues for “any person” or “any study” to not only meet and join forces, but to develop relationships. This hub of communication could take form in an offical Cornell community discussion board, where groups could post on-campus concerns and hook up with organizations with similar ideas. It could also take place in periodic town hall forums led by student leaders.
We’re lucky enough at Cornell to have a huge array of resources of money and committed students and staff. As we begin the new academic year, the opportunity rests within us to take advantage of all Cornell has to offer in order to develop a more cohesive, campus-wide community. This new dialogue hopefully will result in students stepping out of their comfort zones, into unexplored territories of the University. Keep your eyes out for a Hotelie and an engineer sharing a salad at Terrace, discussing the latest trends in sustainable hospitality.
Elana Beale is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be contacted at ebeale@cornellsun.com. Slope Song appears alternate Mondays.