COLUMN: Deconstructing Community

From Gregory Pavlik's "Idols of the Theater," Fall '93 The latest assault on the English language is bound to come via the Commission for Strengthening the Community. While no one knows what exactly is going to come of it, or what the Commission is going to recommend, judging from some of the reflections by students in the Daily Pennsylvanian, there seems to be ample opportunity for distortion and misinterpretation of what a community entails. One of the first explicit attacks on "genuine" communities – ironically in the name of strengthening the community – came just last week. In a recent column, one writer advocated the complete randomizing of all freshman room allocations, as well as a moratorium for freshmen on all activities that "pigeonhol[e] people their first year at the University." All of which is fine, except that it does exactly the opposite of forming community – it prevents individuals from freely coming together, and consequently, threatens existing groups that seek to sustain themselves at the University. People come together quite naturally into these things we call "communities" when given the freedom to associate with whomever they choose. Further, historical antecedents are clear on what is the most potent force for bonding together groups of individuals: ethnicity. This is why, for example, the Hebrews of the Old Testament represent a good example of a strong community. They had a God that was specifically tribal, as well as rules and regulations that, among other things, were meant to bond the Israelites together and to set them apart. By its very nature, the Hebrew community was exclusive, not inclusive. Genuine communities are much like this biblical example – ethnocentric, with a host of mechanisms and rituals to instill identity. The Jewish people have gone through a hell of a lot, and thousands of years later, they are still have a vital communal strength. Real communities are hated and feared by the university for one reason: they are not racially egalitarian. The problem is, that try as it might, the University just can't make communities go away. And to make matters worse, it appears to favor the formation of some, while discouraging the creation of others. Aristotle believed that development of human communities was a natural process. His famous phrase, that man is a "political animal," refers directly to his notion of organic communal development. For the Greeks, life was centered around the polis, which developed to serve the needs – social, spiritual, and economic – of a particular people in a particular place and time. Greek city-states were constantly at odds due to regional variances, and non-Greeks were considered barbaros. Harvard entomologist Edward Wilson describes communities as a kind of genetic conspiracy. The most trenchant example of this is war. Giving one's life for one's homeland becomes a sacrifice for a biological, as well as historical, commonality. If community can penetrate to the level man's most fundamental unit, the gene, then it can not be obliterated by the enlightened engineering of society by a university. Besides, the University really has no right to poke and pry into our private social lives in order to reshape students into its particularly offensive view of what we should be. It does not, as Alan Kors pointed out in a recent speech, have the right to act in loco parentis. In a free university climate, with people acting as free individuals, you will have white fraternities, Jewish social organizations, and Black living quarters. That is as it should be. Free people are also capable of integrating and exploring between different communities, only they do so out of true interest, not because the University follows someone's advice to force them together. I should also squelch the notion of a "community of scholars." Flip through the course guide and try to identify what links, say, Nursing and Classical Studies. Very little. Even within the College, there are so many competing claims to scholarship that it becomes embarrassingly difficult to even identify some common goal within the various areas of academe. But with all these communities existing within the University, how does one balance their competing interests? For this, I have no idea; I am not sure it can be done. One has every right to be offended by an utterly stupid cartoon that appeared in the DP which compared our new JIO to Hitler and Stalin. But one political metaphor does fit rather neatly together with the advocacy of suppressing free speech, that is, Tito of ex-Yugoslavia. I cannot really say what the University is going to do after all is said and done. But whatever choice it makes, it had better do it honestly. If it doesn't want free association between individuals, and it believes that freedom is the price of social peace, then so be it. Just don't treat us like fools and tell us that we are being robbed of our rights in the name of a "community" that doesn't exist. Gregory Pavlik is a senior Materials Science and Engineering major from Delran, New Jersey. Idols of the Theater appears alternate Tuesdays.

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