By Jana Wiersema, Contributing Writer
How do Asbury University students define community?
“It’s people living together in harmony,” said freshman Olivia Nichols.
“Community is where unity is at stake, and that takes fellowship and spending time with one another,” said sophomore Houston Thomas.
“I would define it as any group of people, like-minded or not, just living amongst each other,” said junior Andrew Nesselroade.
“It’s where we work together in compromise and in helping one another to have a good environment,” said senior Phoebe Glaser.
From the moment they apply to Asbury, prospective students are required to write an essay about the ideals of community and also agree to the college’s community standards. During mandatory dorm meetings on Aug. 14, Asbury’s resident directors offered another route to understanding community: the “Life Together Commitment.”
According to Ethan Engelhardt, resident director of Trustees Residence Hall, this written agreement was a collaborative work with him; Sarah Baldwin, vice president of student development; Joe Bruner, dean of community life and Kaylyn Moran, resident director of Glide-Crawford Residence Hall.
Last March, Baldwin pitched the idea of a community agreement form to both Bruner and the resident directors. Baldwin said she sees the form as a way to show students that their individual choices are what creates the Asbury culture, for better or worse.
“Sometimes I get concerned that people think community standards are like traffic tickets,” Baldwin explained. “If they can just avoid the cop, that’s the only issue.”
Englehardt said that the process of creating and finalizing the commitment form took six months after the initial pitch. According to Baldwin, the agreement also had to be reviewed by the student development team.
“I think the most challenging part of it was trying to decide ‘What are the most important topics that we want to hit on without just rewriting the entire manual for student life?’” Englehardt said. He and Baldwin also stated that the writing team drew inspiration from community agreements of other Christian colleges, such as Taylor University.
Moran emphasized that the agreement is voluntary. Students are not required to sign the form and will not be punished for choosing not to. The form itself, she said, is a “symbolic opportunity” to recommit oneself to Asbury’s standards. Baldwin stated that she hopes the form will foster discussion about community.
Baldwin defined community as “a group of people that celebrate together and also ask forgiveness of each other. It’s the people around you, that when something good happens, you look around and say ‘Who can I celebrate with?’ And it’s the people that you mess up with.… That’s community.”
Photo by Olivia Vinson