Care for community is care for each other

Many students hear about the student body’s sense of brotherhood. At assemblies, this point is hammered home, with many speakers discussing it. 

Recently Dean of Students Mr. Luqman Kolade posed a question for the community to ponder: “Are we really an honorable community?”

My answer is no. Walk into any community space, you will usually find some sort of trash left behind. I often go into community spaces after school, and the chairs have stains on them or trash is stuffed between the seat and armrest. It is not unusual to find gum around the chairs. 

Throughout campus, in many community spaces, the same trend appears. In the various pods where students work on their homework and study for assessments, one can find bits and pieces of food and drinks from the Café scattered around the table. Sometimes, the chairs are all over the place, and, if a student moves a chair to another location, it rarely returns to its original place.  

With small intentional steps, we can drastically improve our community and Haverford will become a place of true connection and brotherhood.  

This disregard for community spaces is also apparent in the dining hall, where students leave food for someone else to take care of. Students often leave the cleaning up to the dining hall staff. 

This lack of honor translates into the classroom as well. Although students are friendly and share a sense of brotherhood within their friend group, this doesn’t always translate to people that they don’t know. 

Many students do not interact much with others in the classroom, but only guys they already know in the halls. This leads to the existence of a few, isolated brotherhoods rather than one, unified one. This disconnect is detrimental to the learning environment and camaraderie the school strives for. 

In order to maintain and improve the school’s brotherhood, students need to focus on the little things, starting with not leaving trash behind. If people start respecting the spaces that they occupy, this will hopefully lead to starting to respect others as well. 

With small intentional steps, we can drastically improve our community and Haverford will become a place of true connection and brotherhood.