Word: socialism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...game lived on. At Annenberg and in the Yard, we mindlessly mixed and mingled until finally, perhaps around November, the game finally ended. Not because it was replaced by a particular aversion to new friendships, but because most of us had settled comfortably into one or more meaningful social circles forged over time...
...this sense, the word "integration"--thrown around by the College and House Masters as emblematic of a healthy House community--is both vague and misleading. To expect students to abandon their self-created social circles for the companionship of several hundred random residents is both silly and simple-minded. Social circles of varying sizes are an inevitable part of House and campus life. Eliminate them in the form of blocking and they will merely recreate themselves after subsequent rounds of the yarn game...
This is not to say we should abandon House community altogether. Rather, we need to abandon the misconception that social circles--large or small--necessarily lead to fragmentation. The challenge, rather, is to bridge these groups within each House by infusing a common respect for one other and a genuine love for the House and its traditions...
Labeling large blocking groups as insular or anti-social is easy. What is hard, however, is realizing that at times this insularity may stem from a rooming procedure that often throws entire blocking group into an isolated corner of the House. Or it may result because house-wide events celebrate meaningless mixing rather than substantive communal activity...
Richard S. Lee '01 is a social studies concentrator in Pforzheimer House. His column will appear biweekly...