Discussion Question 8: Community

What you define a community as all depends on the perspective you're looking at it from. The United States is a community within the world; Washington DC is a community within the United States; and American University is a community within Washington DC.



With that being said, American University is not a community in the sense that we all know each other and are friendly as the nostalgic 1950's idea of a community suggests -- that's obviously not true. With respect to the entire American University campus community, I know practically no one. This is why there are communities within the larger AU community. Each sports team is its own community; fraternities and sororities are their own comunity; and the general education program is its own community. Once you get down to this size of a community, you get more of the feeling where the people are connected. Now, people have to work harder and create situations for this connected community feel. The nostalgic idea of a community is becoming uncommon so that a simple common factor sometimes defines a community whether or not a deeper connection exists. So from the larger perspective, American University is technically a community but doesn't really have a community feeling.