This spring I want to celebrate achievement – the achievement of the Blount Program in transforming an overconfident boy into a sensible man and fostering a community I can see still thriving long after my tenure as an undergraduate ended.

Six years ago, I walked into the bland yellow walls of the Blount Living-Learning Center and thought my life was over. Every object and every person was foreign, and I was set adrift on a sea of “new opportunity.” I was here to learn and immerse myself in a liberal arts culture, but the social realm appeared completely unmanageable, and I had no idea how to navigate these new waters. Fortunately for me, I discovered a rare treasure enclosed in these innocuous halls.

The walls of Blount Hall may be bland and ugly, and the furniture hideous and uncomfortable, but this cheerless décor disguises an exuberant body of people. I will not rhapsodize on my own experience, but, instead, I will narrate what I see now after six years.

Most of the students in this residence hall know me; I am their friendly neighborhood TA, always here to decipher a difficult reading, answer a question that is already on the syllabus or offer scathing critical reviews of a paper (or so I’ve been told). Yet the trust here is something I’ve not seen or experienced in any residence hall on campus. I’ve served as an RA in a different building, and I’ve witnessed the behavior of students in other dorms, and the residents there seemed to move in and out for classes in a zombie-like haze, and when they would occasionally wander (sometimes by accident) into a community space, it was because an RA’s poster advertised food.

Here, we don’t require food to socialize (although we certainly appreciate it), and our groups do not gather by accident. Sitting in the spacious Blount lobby is a tradition. When I asked a group of Blount students congregated there what they wanted to hear about in The CW this week, I was struck with the diversity and insight of their ideas.

They wanted me to investigate the reasons behind the disparity between Bryant Dining Hall and Lakeside and follow it up by questioning the lack of healthy food options on campus. One believed I should argue that the observatory in Gallalee should be open more often and advertised more effectively for the general campus body. Another asked me to question the tradition of naming academic buildings after known segregationists. One humorously (but with some severity) quipped that I should argue that The CW sucks. Yet another student suggested that I pen a feel-good piece about Quad activities and its pet-friendly environment.

This conversation gained momentum as the well of ideas continued to flow, until another student suggested that I respond to the recently published opinions column asking young women to wear pants and dress appropriately on campus. This ended the conversation about my column because it sparked a debate about college as a pre-professional environment.

The students engaged in a lively discussion about whether or not it was our business to enforce a dress code on the campus and the perceived grand-standing of the article’s author.

At this point, you may question why any of this is necessary information. I respond: What other academic building can gather physics, political science, philosophy, environmental science, English and education majors in such a conversation? How many of them will range from the dedicated university Fellow to the regular student with no entering laurels, whose achievement can easily be over-looked? Blount provides a space where all these students can gather, and it encourages them to vigorously and freely debate their ideas. Not only does this program offer access to highly trained and knowledgeable faculty in the liberal arts and immerse students in a diverse reading and writing curriculum, but it also challenges them to engage with one another. This engagement between wildly different individuals with competing perspectives fosters a civic spirit that vanished long ago from many residence halls on this campus.

Yet its impression is still felt in these halls as the public policy student engages with the geology major and they discuss how to handle global warming and the Keystone Pipeline. Blount has served as a safe space where the dreams of students are born and nourished in a lively intellectual environment. Blount acts as the quintessential college environment, which encourages students to succeed in their respective fields but, most importantly, to think about the world they inhabit.

John Speer is a graduate student in secondary education. His column runs weekly on Wednesdays.

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