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Julia Kostro

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The Future of Civic Engagement at Colby

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The Future of Civic Engagement at Colby

            I joined a suicide hotline when I was sixteen years old as one of the first trainees of the organization’s new program, a teens-helping-teens line. However, I ended up being one of only two teens in the training group, the rest of the prospective volunteers were for the adult line. I sat in a training room on four Saturdays and Sundays where the average age in the room was about 55, and I learned all about the most difficult calls we could experience and how to handle each and every situation. After my many weekends lost to classes, training shifts, and reflections, I was finally a certified member of the hotline. I was nervous, but I felt ready. Even though I was the youngest member of my training group, I felt supported by them and I think they also felt supported by me. 

            After all of this time, all of this training, my first ever call at the hotline was a hang up. The phone rang and I felt my whole body tense up. I had been training for this moment, and all that I learned flashed through my head. I picked up the phone and sheepishly said my first words, “Samaritans, may I help you?” Almost immediately the line dropped. Although this moment felt more like a slap in the face than a great and meaningful lesson at the time, I think I learned more from that hang up than I would have from an imminent risk caller. All of the training prepared me, a naïve sixteen-year-old, to handle the most important calls when in reality the vast majority of the callers are not in significant danger. However, when they were, I was ready.

            Coming to Colby and joining multiple volunteer organizations, I was surprised by how easy it was to become a volunteer. After one hour-long lecture, I was cleared to go into a school working with children who faced significantly more life challenges than I had. They were open with me about their complicated family situations and financial difficulties and asked me questions about my own, and I was faced with multiple difficult choices right from the beginning, choices that I did not feel I had the tools or training to be ready to handle the difficult situations I was placed in.

            Oxfam, in Education for Global Citizenship, emphasizes the importance of civic engagement, saying students aiming to become global citizens should, “develop ways to engage your local community using global citizenship, and invite community members to related events” and many colleges, Colby included, are working to increase their civic engagement. Colby takes pride in the number of students who volunteer, as it should, but perhaps we should shift our focus from quantity of volunteers to the quality of the interactions. Simply adding a larger number of volunteers in Waterville will not help residents; it is the higher number of quality interactions that will result in more mutually beneficial relationships. When I look at the future of Colby Cares about Kids (CCAK), I hope that it will move towards this change.

            With the civic engagement focus of the downtown dorm, Colby will inevitably have an even larger influx of volunteers into the community. However, this increase of volunteers will make no significant impact if our views of volunteering don’t shift. When talking about the ColourWorld School Programme, Rita Gazdag says that, “Before the first volunteer could enter schools a substantial amount of preparatory work needed to take place in order to assist schools.” This is the approach that I believe we should be taking at Colby. Training should be extensive, and prepare volunteers for real world challenges they could face so they are ready if they do. There must be a way to reflect and build upon these difficult experiences when they happen, and I love that the required class for the downtown dorm residents is trying to accomplish exactly this. There must be a support network of peers and those with higher training when challenges inevitably arise. And lastly, we must have a view that people in the Colby Community and Greater Waterville Community are equals, equally able to produce mutually beneficial relationships that are not simply thought of as charity work.

References

Education for Global Citizenship, Oxfam 2015

Policy & Practice: A Development Education Review, 2007

The Social Aesthetics of Colby College

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The Social Aesthetics of Colby College

I knew that I wanted to come to Colby before meeting a single student. I walked around Colby with my dad on a beautiful summer day and was in absolute awe that a campus could be so beautiful. It was the last of my many college visits, and I was convinced I’d saved the best for last. I attended a small high school, and Colby’s campus seemed to continue on forever in comparison. The brick buildings coupled with perfectly manicured lawns made the campus seem welcoming and bright, and looking out onto the surrounding area from the steps of Miller I couldn’t help but have an overwhelming feeling of being somewhere of deep importance.

It wasn’t until this research seminar on global citizenship education that I learned what the concept of social aesthetics is, and ever since learning about this concept I’ve found it amazing how much I’ve been able to connect it to my daily life at Colby. Social aesthetics, broadly defined, is how the spaces of a society or group, such as a school community, derive certain understandings about that group as a whole, both to group insiders and outsiders looking in. In “Looking Inside and Out: Social Aesthetics of an Elite School in India,” Fazal Rizvi reflects upon his experience at an elite private school in India called Ripon College. In his research, he points out four main spaces that show privilege. These main spaces are the gate, the main building, the chapel, and the lake.

Reading about this research forced me to look back on my experience touring colleges, and I did some research of my own to confirm some of my theories. I found that nearly all of the schools I visited had all of these spaces in one way or another. The main building was almost always either a student union or a library, and the percentage of the main buildings on campuses that had a clock tower of some sort was shocking. Chapels were regularly present, and every school had some iconic picture a lake or pond on a summer day (or oftentimes fall if in New England) on their website. The gate was represented in a variety of ways, either by a hill, a strong separation from the community, or an actual gate to campus (even if it was rarely used).

While reading this, I couldn’t help but laugh at how much Ripon College reminded me of Colby, especially in Ripon’s gate that everyone must get through to get inside the campus. The gate was named “The Gate to Knowledge” and was constructed not as a means of protection, but to give students a sense of pride every time they pass through them. In the case of Colby, however, this gate is much less physical. A gate represents a separation from one community to another, so at Colby I see our separation from Greater Waterville up on Mayflower Hill is our representation of Ripon’s gate. We are situated above the Waterville community, and from the top of Miller steps one can look down to see just how separated we are from the rest of the community. These steps also perform a similar task of giving students a sense of pride and grandness when they look out over the expanse of the forest.

I was able to spend my January living in St. Petersburg, Russia. During this stay, I lived with a host family, and it gave me an opportunity to reflect on my privilege in ways I hadn’t before. In Russia, I toured many palaces of Russian tsars, and they all had one almost comical way that they expressed their wealth. This commonality was that they had perfectly kept rooms with all of their prized possessions, kept in pristine condition, that they would show guests when they came to visit the palace. Then, in another secret area of the palace entirely would be their actual living quarters. This showed visitors the royal family’s wealth and prestige, and presented a level of wealth that left a significant impression on visiting monarchs. Learning about Colby through the lens of social aesthetics made me feel that maybe the college is putting on a similar display for those who visit.

Even so, with everything I now know, I still can’t help an overwhelming sense of pride and importance every time I stand at the top of the Miller steps.