Benjamin Franklin's idea of activism as a lifestyle is not an easy one to put into practice, as the members of the Franklin Community house are discovering during their first semester there.
The residence was created last semester to completely immerse students in a service-learning environment, but things have not quite worked out that way in reality.
Key to the success of the program -- which is housed in the Stouffer College House Annex, once the house of the Zeta Beta Tau fraternity -- was the fact that all 18 program residents would enroll in a seminar and collaborate on a service project outside of class.
Currently, however, the only thing all residents share is the building's common room.
Several upperclassmen with busy schedules could not enroll in the class. Much of the planning for house events takes place during class time, so these students must stay updated by accessing the seminar's Blackboard site.
In addition, many members of the program came into it already involved in projects they took up in other community service-based courses.
And because the program could not attract enough students to fill the 34-person house, the remainder of the rooms are occupied by transfer students.
"What the house is not is a lot of people working on the same project," resident and College senior and Student Committee on Undergraduate Education Farrah Freis said.
In addition, program members are unable to agree on whether they should continue pursuing their own plans, collaborate on one initiative as a group or do both.
This disparity in opinion extends to their plans for the house.
Though the Center for Community Partnerships -- which initiated the program along with the Greenfield Intercultural Center -- emphasizes that the Franklin Community should centralize student activism on campus, residents and administrators are unsure of its role as a hub.
"We're trying to figure out whether we want to be a 'think tank' or an 'action tank,'" said College junior Becky Mead, who lives in the house. "Each person has a different vision of the house."
So far, last-minute and late-night house meetings have been the main forums of discussion.
"It's a democratic process," said Faculty Fellow Everett Herman, who supervises the group.
Until members can agree upon a specific direction for the house, it will be adding to the unstructured nature of Penn's community-service initiatives, rather than pooling them together as the original plans intended.
"It's a laboratory," said Sean Vereen, associate director of the Greenfield Intercultural Center, emphasizing that the Franklin Community is still in its planning stages.
