“A sense of community,” proclaimed the headline of the mass-email from my professor. Apparently, she is on a faculty board which is looking at the “community” feeling, or lack thereof, at DU. To create, foster and imbue a feeling of “community” among the students, faculty and staff at DU.

This is a very good question. And the answer? DU has no sense of community, at least not one that I want to be a part of. Let’s face it, we DO NOT have a community feel to this school.

Let’s start at the beginning. For myself, a community would be a group of people that I felt I belonged to, whom I could identify with, and work together toward a common goal that we all cared about. Basically, someplace where I felt I belonged. How many of us can say we honestly feel like we belong here?

DU is not what I expected, and I have been greatly disappointed in many aspects of it, such as the control the bureaucrats have over the way the school is run, the massive amount of construction going on which is disrupting everyone’s lives and ruining what little landscape we have, the cliquish nature of many of the students here, and how unenthusiastic the student body is for about just anything, unless it is free beer. This is not a community; it’s an apathetic kegger party.

If you’re not interested in sports, Greek life or getting wasted every weekend, it is very difficult to have a social life here, or to connect with many of the other students on campus.

I would like to see many different types of communities develop at DU in more than just the athletic- and Greek-oriented environments. I believe that DU has already started that to some extent in the Living and Learning Communities. Honors and PLP are good examples of that. But what about the rest of us, the majority who don’t fit into the top 10 percent of the undergraduate population, those of us who don’t find our faces plastered all over the admissions booklets and URDU signs?

I could go on about this topic for hours. But I’ve got better things to do with my time. Does this school foster a sense of campus-wide community? No. Does everyone, or at least most of the students here, even have a sense of “school pride?” No. Not that these two terms are synonymous with each other, but it demonstrates my point: DU needs to become a community that the people that live here want to be a part of.

But will that be accomplished if the ideas and concepts are handed down from On High, like another university mandate about what thou shalt and shalt not do? I don’t think so. We need a community on campus, but the only way that’s going to come about is if students, faculty and staff work together. And the only way that will happen is if this lethargic student body does something about it first.