Creating Community in a Non-Communal World
Delivered by Jeff Colbert at RC's 2006 Commencement
April 25, 2006

I have to admit, I have long desired to speak at a Commencement. While I like to believe that I am not overly endowed with ego, as I am, for example, with waistline, I have, at times, thought that I might have a useful comment or two to make to those who were about to leave our academic institution and move on to the next phase of their life and career. I have had opportunities to think about what I would say. Since my first university graduation in December of 1984, I have probably attended 30-40 university graduations here and at other schools and have heard the commensurate number of graduation addresses. I have heard notable speakers from a variety of fields, but I have heard few notable addresses. In fact, it may render my earlier comment about my level of ego null and void, but after most addresses, I have thought, "I could have done better than that!"

I have learned, however, that sitting on the sidelines critiquing graduation addresses is far easier than writing one. It reminds me of comments made by many television game show participants. They watch the program from the comfort of their home (or dorm room) and are private geniuses. However, when they are selected to do the real thing and actually appear on national television, many private geniuses become public idiots. As I began to ponder what I actually would say, the fear of becoming a "public idiot" fell over me.

I had thought for years that if I had an opportunity to make a commencement address, I would talk about "the great questions of life." There are several significant questions that virtually every human must answer in their lifetime. How they answer them will largely shape their future actions. So, when I was asked to perform this honor, my mind immediately flew there, a safe place where I had previously invested some time and thought. However, as I thought and prayed about it, that just didn’t seem to be the right message.

Later, as I thought about Residential College, I thought about the issues of "freedom and order." As a political scientist, those are concepts with which I am familiar. In both my Political Issues class and my Intro to Public Policy class, we discuss the meanings, the importance, and the natural conflict between those two concepts. RC is certainly representative of that conflict. We exist within a relatively ordered university, yet we frequently push those university boundaries to see to what extent RC can bend or break them. I doubt there is a group of UNCG students with more freedom than RC students. Yet, if we were honest, we would have to admit that RC students, both historical and current, can be frequent abusers of that freedom, sometimes encouraging others to implement more order. But regardless of the applicability, that just didn’t seem right either. In fact, at a lunch meeting just this past Friday, Paul asked me if I would have a speech title by Monday so he could put it in the program. I indicated to Paul that we would all be lucky if I had a speech by Tuesday, much less a title by Monday!

And yet, as the Lord frequently does, I was given inspiration over the weekend. I imagine that many of you noticed an unusual presence on campus over the weekend. The campus seemed to "age" on Friday and Saturday as the University celebrated Alumni Reunion Weekend. For a number of years, the university celebrated Alumni weekend later in the spring, after classes had ended and most students were gone. Reacting to alumni requests, the Alumni Board moved the event to a weekend when school was in session. The alumni wanted to see the university when students were in attendance, rather than when the campus was relatively empty. I have been a member of the Alumni Association for a number of years, but had never attended a reunion. That was a mistake, and I will not repeat it in the future. Throughout the weekend, I had the opportunity to see a University that I knew about only through historical lectures or Dr. Allen Treleases’s wonderful book on the history of UNCG. I saw a community that is over one hundred years old come together and celebrate. I saw and met alumni with full heads of dark hair, because the ravages of time are still light on them. I saw others with full, dark heads of hair, largely acquired through the benefits of chemical engineering purchased at Walgreens or CVS. I saw others, with less hair, or whiter hair, who had quit battling time over their appearance. But regardless of their appearance, all shared a common identity—they were graduates of this school, whether it was the institution renamed in 1919 as the North Carolina College for Women, the institution renamed in the fall of 1931 as The Woman’s College of the University of North Carolina, or the institution which became known, in 1963, as the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. They were and are, a "community." And then, I knew what I had to talk about—community.

Residential College prides itself on its sense of community and it should. But I think sometimes we get a little full of ourselves on the subject. We tend to think that we are the experts, and the only experts, on the subject of community here at UNCG. But this weekend taught me that community existed here at UNCG long before RC came into existence. The question we have to answer now, and in the future years, is whether community will continue to exist here at UNCG and, if so, in what form, and, where will we take it from here?

I spent a great deal of the weekend with two young ladies. Like me, they graduated in 1986 and we were the only 1986 graduates who showed up! Unlike me, that was the year they completed their undergraduate work, and for me, it was the year I completed my Master’s. And, unlike me, 1986 was the year they should have completed their undergraduate degree. I should have completed mine in 1974, but I actually completed my undergraduate degree in December of 1984. So, I was 10 years their senior. But we shared one other common experience. It was obvious to each of us that "our" UNCG was rather different than the one experienced by most of the alumni in attendance. For most of them, UNCG was "the Woman’s College," a small, all white, all female institution which focused on a limited number of curriculum areas and whose competition for students was largely other public and private women’s schools. Our UNCG and yours, is a modern, diverse, teaching and research institution. We compete for students with everyone and our curriculum must be large, expansive and ever adapting to the 21st century environment.

One of the most startling events of the weekend was the Saturday luncheon, where we honored the class of 1956, the newest group of ladies to be 50 year graduates of the Woman’s College. I must parenthetically inform you that there was a male member of the class of ’56, at least sort of a member. I did not know it, but in those days, classes had child mascots. The male mascot of the class of ’56 was our own, Paul Ashby! I bet there are some cute pictures somewhere and Paul, I’m gonna find ‘em!! At that lunch, the various classes celebrating their reunions stood and were recognized. The largest gasp and applause was relegated to two elderly ladies who had graduated, not from the Woman’s College, but from the North Carolina College for Women. These two ladies had graduated from college in 1931!! You do the math! Without knowing anything about UNCG in the 1920s and 1930s, we can all imagine how different their lives and experiences had to have been. Consider for a moment the world they were born into and raised in compared to the world they are in today.

Community in the past meant different styles of communication-- hand written letters and heavy, one to a house, party line telephones rather than e-mail and individual pocket sized cell phones, which also have text messaging, computer games, internet access and cameras.

Community meant different styles of home life—when it was hot, you went out on the porch or under nearby trees to get some shade; you didn’t rush into the house, close all the doors and windows, and enjoy the peaceful solitude of air conditioning. Homes had porches where folks could sit during the day or after the evening meal, and neighbors would walk over and talk, face to face (!), to each other. Today, if many Americans were tested on the names of their neighbors, most would fail.

Community meant different styles of entertainment—if you were well to do, you had a black and white television set, all three channels of it!! Homes had larger yards where the kids would gather and play games together outdoors, not sit alone in their rooms and enjoy PlayStation, search the Internet, or watch television on the set in their bedroom which is attached to the 300 channel satellite system.

Now don’t misunderstand me, I’m not saying those times were better, I’m saying they were different. I rather like the idea that I can e-mail an entire class through Blackboard rather than making 75 separate phone calls, or just letting them find out when they got to class that class was cancelled. I like many parts of the Internet and I enjoy watching ballgames or sports events of some sort almost any hour of the day. I like that when my daughter became of legal driving age, she was able to have a phone in the car with her that insured that, if she had trouble, she could call AAA and then either her mother or myself, and not have her safety depend upon the attitude or the inclination of the person who stopped to "help".

Education was different as well. We had fewer students, fewer curricula choices, limited career options for our graduates and many came to UNCG simply to become "educated". It was a value in and of itself, and for several generations, having a college degree, of any sort, was the key to a bright and relatively prosperous future.

Well, Dorothy, we’re not in Kansas (or WC) any more! Residential College was born out of the reality that the world was rapidly changing and that the university had to change with it. Sometimes, we act as though the University is the cause of all these changes. We rant about being reduced to "numbers", and about the increasing professionalism and emphasis on jobs. We complain about departments that make increasing demands on their majors and try to crowd out the elements of a "liberal" education. I understand these concerns, but UNCG is not the instigator of these issues; we are, at worst, reactors to these issues. I’m sorry, but if we are going to continue in our mission to educate the sons and daughters of North Carolina, as well as other states and countries, we cannot be what we were. And, as we have now have an enrollment in excess of 16,000 students, the university cannot refer to them all by their first names. The marketplace where you are going to compete for jobs is a demanding one that requires ever more knowledge about your field. It is rapidly becoming an international marketplace. We can blithely ignore this and, as an institution, become marginalized and antiquated, or we can prepare you for the competitive world in which you will have to compete. Long gone is the day when a college degree guaranteed you any job, much less one that is challenging, fulfilling, and allows you the standard of living you would like to have.

So, what do we do to cope with all of these changes? We continue the vision of Warren Ashby and others, who, more than three decades ago, refused to waste time howling at the moon and, instead, found a way to create community in the rapidly changing world that was the UNCG of the late 1960s and early 1970s. We must follow their example. The need to create and sustain community in the 21st century will be even greater than it was 35 years ago. We must embrace the innovation that was the founders of RC and use it to not just sustain OUR community, but help others create and maintain theirs. I have to admit, with some embarrassment, that I have spoken of other "communities" on campus as though they were something lesser. Don’t misunderstand me. I am an alumnus of RC and I think we are an amazing program, but we are not all things for all people and we shouldn’t try to be. Other folks want community, but a different type of community. We should embrace all of the elements of this institution that are trying to create community, because each of them says, in their own way, to Warren Ashby and the other visionaries who birthed RC--you were right. Community is important. A person being something other than a number is important. Creating connectivity in education is important. Allowing students to feel a bond, a kinship, with other students and with their teachers is important. Empowering students to make decisions is important.

Every movement on this campus in the past twenty years to create community has been a recognition of what the founders saw more than 35 years ago. In the rapidly changing world in which we live, and in which we will live, community will no longer be a natural, easy thing to have. We will have to create it wherever we go. UNCG is the most diverse university in the UNC system. We have increasing numbers of transfer students, commuting students and graduate students. Think about this. Fifty years ago, 80% of UNCG’s students lived on campus and 20% commuted. Today, even with the new student housing being built, the numbers are virtually reversed. How will the university create community with tomorrow’s population? I don’t know. But I know who ought to among those thinking about this and helping the university in this endeavor. It ought to be the administrators, the students, the faculty and the alumni of Residential College. We have a legacy, a tradition, and, I believe, an obligation.

Some of you are leaving RC to move into the outer university. When there, don’t pine for the good old RC—create community where you are. Some of you are leaving RC and UNCG and heading for graduate school. When you get there, don’t wax poetic about what once was. Take the vision of RC with you and create community. Some of you will graduate in a few short days and move into the world of work. Feel free to complain about the loneliness, the isolation, the lack of close friends, and the lack of connection to others. Feel free to have the personal private pity party of all time--for ONE weekend!! Then, get off your duff and begin the process of creating community. The founders of RC, I believe, did not create RC so we could have a wonderful, insular, self gratifying experience that we would eventually leave, and then feel sorry for the poor fools who missed what we had. I firmly believe that their hope was that we would gain this awareness of the importance of community, and then take it wherever we went. Those who came before us: Ashby, Arndt, Bragg, Calhoun, Cooley, Gordon, Griffith, Helgeson, Pfaff, Rogers, Tisdale, Whitlock, made a difference in our lives so that we might go forward.

Those who are now and have been before you in recent years: Aaroe, Arndt, Ashby, Calhoun, Carpenter, Cauthen, Flood, Headington, McKinnon, Ramsey, Seabrooke, and, if I may be so bold as to say, Colbert, have tried to make a difference in your life so that you might do the same.

The road will be hard, I absolutely guarantee it. But as one who has now walked on both sides of the RC road, I cannot describe for you the measure of the reward. I wish you the best in all you do in the future. Stay connected to both Residential College and UNCG. Support them both in the future. Speak well of us, wherever you go, but I’d far prefer you do it by action, rather than by word.

Thank you

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