With the help of Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and others, President Marx led a different sort of opening this past weekend when the College celebrated the official opening of the Center for Community Engagement (CCE).
"We see this Center as an important new addition to a tradition of Amherst that goes back to our beginnings there on the quad," said Marx, speaking at the ribbon-cutting ceremony on Friday evening in front of Keefe Campus Center. "It is a day therefore that we think will prove to be historic, for Amherst, and we hope beyond Amherst."
The CCE is located within the Campus Center, and comes as the result of a $13-million philanthropic investment from the Argosy Foundation, founded by John Abele '59.
In addition to the ribbon-cutting, the center's opening weekend was commemorated with a community engagement fair, a school-wide barbeque, numerous panels on community service issues and a conversation in Johnson Chapel with Governor Patrick.
Patrick began with a speech on the importance of community and then took questions from the audience. "[Community] is seeing the stake we have in each other's dreams and each others struggles, as well as our own," said Patrick. "The true value of community is seen, I believe, over the long term, and I think that's a point worth emphasizing as you launch this center."
Patrick spoke of his childhood on the South Side of Chicago in the 1950s and 60s. It was "a life of want, of deeply segregated and ill-equipped schools, of gang violence and limited hope," he said.
Yet, according to Patrick, a sense of community ran through it all. "In the 50s and 60s on the South Side of Chicago, that was time when every child was under the jurisdiction of every single adult on the block," he said.
After his speech, Patrick answered some questions from the audience. When asked what he hoped the CCE would accomplish, Patrick said that most broadly, he hopes it will confront cynicism. "I'd like to see you defeat cynicism, or at least take a big step in that direction," he said. "We are awash in cynicism in this country. I think it serves the political agenda of some, it certainly compromises the policy agenda of many, and it makes it very hard for people to believe that community is possible, that it's real."
At the ribbon-cutting the night before Patrick's speech, Director of the CCE Molly Mead, like Patrick, emphasized the importance of community as it relates to the new center. "I think one of the roles of the Center for Community Engagement is to work with Amherst College to ensure that an Amherst College education prepares students to be leaders in a diverse democracy, gives them the skills and knowledge to build trust in communities," she said.
Mead made it clear that the center will not simply try to be a mock community service agency. Rather, it will constantly fall back on the College's rich educational tradition. "None of us has a corner in the market on the ideas necessary to solve every one of the public problems we care about," she said. "We don't know, in many instances, what to do. We need to find out. What better place to help generate that knowledge than Amherst College."
Mead noted that the tutoring of younger students by college-aged students often has at best no effect on those being tutored, and may even be harmful to the students' learning. She said it was up to the CCE to find innovative, effective ways to make a difference. "I don't think we've figured out how to solve every one of the public problems that vex us, so we're going to need to try some new things," she explained.
At the ribbon-cutting ceremony, Marx outlined the three fundamental motivations for the center. First, he spoke of the practical effects the center will have. "The Center for Community Engagement makes it possible for us to say that all students should have a level playing field of opportunity," he said. "That the benefits of internships and of learning outside of the classroom must not be the preserve of those simply who have that as a possibility."
Second, he noted the educational benefits, saying, "It is an idea of education that says education happens in the classroom fundamentally, but education happens outside of the classroom as well. And that if we can find a way to connect those forms of learning, then we will heighten the possibilities of learning on both sides."
Finally, he strongly emphasized the moral vision of the center. "The Center for Community Engagement aims to do nothing less than to change the culture, not just of this place, but of society more broadly," Marx stressed. "That with the privilege of an Amherst education comes what we hope will become second nature for all our students: a sense of obligation to pay back to society in whatever form or career our students choose."
Abele cautioned that there must be constant scrutiny to make sure the CCE succeeds. "We're not there, we're just starting," he said. "And I hope we are all skeptical, not negatively skeptical, but asking ourselves the difficult questions: how do we do it better, how do we really make this work?"