20 possible ideas: Create Community for Students
- Increase safety of surrounding community to better unify Lehigh campus with the Bethlehem community and get students to want to interact with the community
- Better utilize common spaces in dorms as a space to work or hang out
- Recognizing the importance of building community between first year students to help them have a strong foundation for future years
- Have a building or classes further into the town and away from the main campus body
- Hold classes at local areas like the YMCA
- Having an open access trails through mountain top forest
- Transportation for community members to sports events and better publicizing Lehigh sports events, such as football
- Having local restaurants have student discounts for Lehigh students to encourage them to come eat there and interact with local residents
- Promoting local events on campus (steel stacks etc.)
- Make dining options more affordable so that community members will be inclined to eat on our campus
- Encourage community members to use our buildings during extreme cold/heat weather
- Having more opportunities to work/take classes over the summer (program specific and funding opportunities)
- Lehigh could extend wifi into the Southside community
- Having sports teams have mandatory community service days once a semester (get out of practice)
- Expand or advertise farmer’s market to have more fresh produce for residents and students
- Have closed street farmer’s market
- Unbolt the chairs to encourage community members to enjoy our campus
- Better advertise performances for community members and students
Blog Prompt #7
Round out your synthesis of ideas, creating one big idea to summarize your intended changes
Generally, for Lehigh to be a welcoming place for the intermingling between the surrounding community and that which exists on campus, the relationship with the Southside residents. As professor Breena Holland put in her comment on the forum, “some people might find it offensive that the University is the source of gentrification in the community and then shows up at meetings to claim agnosticism about whether student housing projects (by outside developers) should further invade the south side…. people who live on the south side don’t find this very honest, even if they appreciate that the University does not lend its outright support for new and large student housing projects… [W]e need to do more than claim it’s not needed–which no one really seems to believe.”
The university wants to expand, and a part of that involves off-campus housing that is pushing out affordable housing for families that have perhaps lived off-campus for generations. Besides addressing this explicit desire of the university and its implication for southside neighborhoods, we need to have a more welcoming atmosphere on campus, starting with the physical appearance of the campus and ending with the attitude of the students.
Due to the gentrification of the southside community which Lehigh has been a catalyst of, community members often disapprove of Lehigh’s expansion as it has resulted in the displacement of community members. Accordingly, community members are not eager to interact with an institute that has gentrified their community, changing their culture, demographic, and cost of the rent. Thus, in order to encourage southside community members to integrate themselves into our Lehigh community to bring the southside community to Lehigh students, it is necessary to mend the relationship between Lehigh and the southside community. It is important to recognize that Lehigh must take initiative by demonstrating to the community that they are interested in mending the relationship. Then, community members can decide if they are interested in engaging with Lehigh. These two components are critical in order for there to be real integration between Lehigh and the southside community.
Lehigh extending its resources to the southside community will demonstrate to community members that Leigh recognizes the negative effects of gentrification, but is making an effort to benefit the community by offering its resources. With this in mind, ideas for Lehigh to implement is making resources such as wifi, the library, seating areas, and buildings during extreme weather accessible to southside community members. From using these resources provided by Lehigh, community members will feel more connected to Lehigh and will see Lehigh’s efforts in mending their relationship which will motivate community members to reciprocate the mending of their connection. Thus, community members may consider collaborating with Lehigh to demonstrate their efforts to integrate themselves with the Lehigh community. These ideas may include having a closed-street farmers market, having discounts for Lehigh students at restaurants, allowing Lehigh to hold classes at areas like YMCA, and advertising local events to Lehigh students (etc).
Create a draft of your visual that captures your solution
Boundary-spanning behaviors of individuals engaged with the U.S. military community – Scientific Figure on ResearchGate. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/University-community-engagement-boundary-spanning-roles-at-public-research-universities_fig1_276921172 [accessed 6 Oct, 2022]
How does this big idea align with our mission? (Lehigh’s mission is on their main website)
Lehigh’s mission statement is to advance learning through the integration of teaching, research, and service to others. Lehigh does much in the fields of teaching and research, however, we seem to lack as an institution the idea that these things should be done for the end goal of helping else. We can serve in our research, as demonstrated by the Lehigh Valley Social Impact program. So, not just does building bridges between the university and the community align with our school’s mission, it must be sought out to achieve its fulfillment.
How does this big idea bring distinction to Lehigh?
Universities across the nation are working on integrating within the surrounding community, as a resource and a friendly service to their neighbors. Often universities are settled in the middle of lower-income communities that may look upon the institution as ‘other’ and a place they are not allowed. However, the goal should be to welcome them, especially the youth that may be discouraged by the resentment toward the apparent money that campuses often exude. Everyone should be welcome on campuses, and everyone should feel like it’s a place they could belong. Since it is such a large topic for universities, Lehigh making these efforts in community engagement would open up a large space of common conversation with other universities; the possibility of distinction depends on the extent of the university’s efforts and successes.
How ambitious is the breadth and depth of impact?
The depth of true impact is deep. It is very difficult to change peoples’ opinions, and even more difficult to gain their trust if they feel it has been abused in the past. This will take more than surface-level patchwork and works of goodwill toward the community. It will take active discussion between the university, community, students, and the other third-party stakeholders in their relationships. The breadth of the impact is not necessarily that large however and can be tackled piece by piece.
Do we have the capacity to pull this off?
Community building is difficult. Even many of the professors who commented in the forum acknowledged that their suggestions would probably never be implemented by the university. However, the difficulty doesn’t seem to lie in the breadth of the idea itself, but in the bureaucracy and resistance within the administration. However, we do have the resources and the clout to do these things, since acts of care in and of themselves do not necessarily take that many resources.
Individual: add at least 5 of your unique observations/solutions to your respective forum
-Many Lehigh students are part of very small communities (friend group, study group, roommates)
– Larger groups give people something in common to connect, but on a less personal level at time (Fraternities, Sororities, Sports teams)
– Students may benefit from mixing the different groups they belong to or being pushed to do so in order to break out of smaller communities and form a larger school-wide sense of community
– School-wide communities could be better built with on-campus events that make students from different niches intermingle and could be provoked with giveaways or other incentives
– A greater school-wide sense of community could increase the amount of pride or school spirit that students have for Lehigh