No Need for Artificial Community

They changed the tables in Annenberg last week. The new arrangement dismayed me greatly. Instead of long rows of tables, the first-year dining hall transformed for a few days to cute sets of two tables pushed together as squares. I'll admit that the setup did lend Annenberg some appropriate ambience for the special brunch to match the solemnity of its busts and stained-glass windows. But the big squares lacked a certain functionality.

My hunch is that whoever thought to move the tables wanted to encourage more open discussion--the figurative round table, much like a WWF ring is called the squared circle. Somebody wanted to create little self-contained units of eaters. "I think it's more sociable," one of the card-swipers told me. "We'll probably try this for a few weeks." If all went well, I figure, Annenberg could boast a Grays West square, a rugby square, a Stuyvesant square and possibly a table, home to much revelry, of prospective math/physics double concentrators.

Unfortunately, nobody can really talk to each other around those mega-tables. The length of the square is so large that the person directly across from you sits in a different ZIP code. The closest thing friends can do to approach the old face-to-face intimacy of the single tables is to cluster around a corner of the square. But even this maneuver requires a good bit of neck agility. That new setup pushes people apart.

There's been a lot of discussion of community in my three months at Harvard. First-years hear a message that communities are desirable, supportive and a necessary part of the school. For example, the intramural sports program tells us that "the emphasis is upon participation by all and building a camaraderie among the Class of 2002.." On a smaller scale, it's expected in letter and in spirit that we'll make activities with our entryway a focal point of our social lives.

The focus on the entryway builds togetherness but it is a togetherness among individuals who were placed together sort of randomly in one sense and deliberately in another--in no way by free choice. This must violate all sorts of Mankiw's principles of utility maximization.

In the loftiest plan I've heard to solve our problems of separation, an Undergraduate Council presidential candidate promised to forge a "Healthier Community." The Crimson derided such plans last week as too "vague." But the paper seized upon the wrong word; it wasn't just a weak choice of adjectives that rendered the platform suspect. The point that painting the whole College as one community might be fraudulent never came up. Yes, students at the Law School or School of Education, usually bound by similar pasts and futures, truly have something. But students here haven't all come from similar backgrounds and don't necessarily share the same goals.

We can't produce a shared sense of community just through willing it. Those arguing for the deliberate building of community assume or postulate that getting people together is great and preferable to fragmentation. This theory holds as long as people want to get together with each other and aren't doing it just because of a barrier like living too far across campus or fearing, or not understanding, others. I don't think this is the problem. Most students did not choose Harvard College for its marvelous social experiences. Though people here are not extra-dorky introverts, many are happy to occupy a single social space. What makes this desire objectionable? In fact, the closest we really get to community is through the magic of e-mail or these pages, which can bring the ideas of one person to many.

However, amidst these ideas, most voices do ask for a greater sense of union among undergraduates. During the elections, a senior, campaigning on behalf of two running-mates, accosted me outside the Science Center and literally followed me all the way back to my dorm, along the way playing up the merits of both his candidates and the community they would ostensibly foster. When I asked him why community matters so much, he alluded to the many cases of suicide and depression students in the College suffer. Fair enough, but I don't think any student government could relieve academic burnout or loneliness with more forums in Harvard Hall. Nor do I think that more trips to Quincy Market with the dorm could ease a first-year's transition into university life.

Artificial communities usually don't work too well. We should stop referring reflexively to created groups of individuals as communities. The best that 6,400 young people with profoundly different goals can do is just get along.

Meanwhile, each can use her talents to make the lives of others more satisfying. Instead of joining a community provided to her, each will find her space.

By Sunday night the tables in the 'Berg had returned to their old positions. Luckily, a "few weeks" doesn't mean very long in Annenberg time. Now when I spy someone I want to eat with, I can choose to sit across from him or her and have a meaningful conversation instead of shouting across a table filled with the person's dormmates. What I've enjoyed most about Harvard is the absolute freedom of the life. Where it clashes with "community," I'll take the independence any time.