Life on an Unfinished Campus

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 18:07:00 -0400
campus-culture, college-rankings

I had some time to think last week, as I crossed the campus from a distant parking lot to my office in The Commons and then back again at each day’s end. After seven years, the lot across from the Commons Garage was no longer available to me, every space occupied by the time I arrived a little before 9:00 each morning. The change was unsettling and unwelcome, a disruption of my routines and expectations.

A few weeks ago the big news on campus was that we were once again named the #1 Up-and-Coming university in the United States. The phrase “up-and-coming” is appropriately kinetic: It hints at both progress and instability, at sketches and erasures; at flux. Last week there was the flux of thousands of new students, the campus alive with voices after a quiet summer. New black and gold banners lined the walkways, the completion of a creative community project two years in the making. At Involvement Fest, many hundreds of students endured the heat of the day to reach out, make connections, and pull each other into the life of this place. At Patapsco Hall there was a ceremonial groundbreaking for a new building, and the promise of more beds, a more residential campus, and pickup basketball games to be played on new courts in the years ahead.

At the groundbreaking, Resident Student Association President Carl Grun described having worked with other members of the UMBC community to envision and plan the new facilities. He spoke of the opportunities students have to make their mark on this campus: to enter a history still being lived, and make contributions that matter. It was inspiring to hear him name one of the things I appreciate most about this place: It is self-consciously becoming what it will one day be, and is not yet complete, and the flux itself is an invitation to join and create and become.

But the construction and the messiness of growing do take a toll, as anyone who waited in a line of cars just to reach Hilltop Circle discovered last week. I was relatively fortunate—I experienced the full lots but not the traffic—but I was surprised at how disorienting it was to walk in from the outskirts each day instead of parking in my old familiar territory. I found myself fighting the irrational feeling that I might not be quite as welcome or included in this fresh version of UMBC. I can understand how other members of our community might be feeling that way. Here’s hoping that in week two and beyond, the felt experience of the campus is of excitement at boundless opportunities to make history and create community, and that our growing pains subside.