Report to the President
The Committee on Traditions and Community Ties

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Colleges and universities are not immune from the dynamics of contemporary society. Specialized, compartmentalized, and fragmented, modern society reinforces a narrow view of education, from early years through graduate study, making education seem like a track into a career rather than a lifelong process of enlarging the mind and liberating the spirit. As a result, students at Emory and other universities often view college as a transient, necessary means to a vocational or professional end. They frequently sacrifice intangibles—personal relationships, exploration of new subjects, formation of identity through common experience—that otherwise could offer more lasting, meaningful, and rewarding college memories.

Emory has established a sound academic program and reputation and has moved well past the status of a comfortable regional university. Nevertheless, expansion in all arenas has raised the question whether community life at Emory has been compromised in the process. Emory’s growth, if not balanced, can undermine its unifying community structure. The University’s success as an international university is well known; the lives and well-being of its students, faculty, alumni, administrators, and staff—the dynamic core of the Emory community—should figure equally in the success story of the University.

The Charge
Cognizant that the University—and college life in particular—very powerfully defines, supports, and creates structures for community and personal identity, a growing number of Emory constituents have called for the University to guide the destiny of its community with deliberation, continuity, candor, and decisiveness. In response to thought-provoking concerns and recommendations of the University’s alumni, and seeking to safeguard the future of Emory’s community and traditions, the Board of Governors of the Association of Emory Alumni proposed to President Chace in November 1997 that a committee of students, faculty, alumni, staff, and administrators be formed to appraise the health of Emory’s community and traditions. President Chace appointed seventeen persons from across the spectrum of the University and charged them to study and submit their observations and recommendations.
The Committee on Traditions and Community Ties at Emory (CONTACT Emory, as the committee came to be known), began work in April 1998 and submitted its final report last spring.

Mission
The mission of CONTACT Emory was two-fold: to plumb the depth and richness of the places, experiences, events, and values that define Emory’s community and traditions; and to identify the component of community-building and tradition that the University should maintain, enhance, or pursue. Toward these ends the committee sought to:

Examine the patterns of community in the daily activities on campus, by considering where Emory dines, socializes, recreates, and celebrates;
Identify Emory’s traditions and discerned which of them should be recognized, retained, enhanced, or discarded;

Consider Emory’s rituals: where and how Emory initiates its newcomers, marks rites of passage, celebrates historic moments, and honors excellence and achievement; and

Learn what other academic institutions can teach about developing a robust and adroit campaign of community-building.

Institutional Background
Early in its work, CONTACT Emory tested the hypothesis that the unique history and distinctive nature of Emory had produced an institution in which community and tradition were underdeveloped. A brief description of this past may suggest how Emory’s current sense of itself as a community developed.

Emory’s Beginnings
Just as Harvard College, Yale College, and other liberal arts colleges predated the great universities that now bear their names, so Emory College, founded in 1836, predates Emory University, which was chartered in 1915. Unlike those other schools, however, Emory the University began its life in Atlanta as a collection of professional schools (the Candler School of Theology, the Lamar School of Law, and Emory University School of Medicine). Emory College came to the Atlanta campus only when faculty members moved from Oxford, Georgia, to constitute a liberal arts department of the University.

In many respects the traditions, spirit, and style of the original Emory College at Oxford survived the transfer to Atlanta, and they initially thrived on a campus of relatively few students, nearly all of whom were young white men. But ultimately many of those older traditions faded. The spirit of Emory College seems to have been deeply affected by the great influx of students following World War II, by the development of a research focus and Ph.D. programs in the 1950s, and by the tumultuous decades of the 1960s. By the time of the famous Woodruff gift in 1979 and the rapid transformations that occurred as a result, Oxford could no longer serve as a guiding model for community. Drawing on some aspects of its past, Emory now must cultivate new community models that fit present realities.

Emory’s Challenge
Many long-time faculty and staff, as well as some alumni, assert that Emory has projected two contradictory images: an "Old Emory" and a "New Emory." Old Emory is thought of as largely regional, southern, predominantly male, white, and traditional. One community member recalled, "Emory was a small school in a forest." The past two decades have been extraordinary, as the University undertook a far-reaching building program that developed the administrative and academic infrastructure as well as the physical facilities. Old Emory has disappeared. But its disappearance has left behind a kind of nostalgia for the remembered close-knit, small community on a somewhat bucolic campus.

New Emory likewise carries predominantly positive connotations for most members of the University community, who describe it by adjectives like "dynamic," "world-class," "diverse," "international," "cutting-edge," "large," and "complex." The University’s vocal leadership in promoting racial and ethnic diversity and embracing difference is particularly noteworthy. Emory’s current challenge thus is to preserve a community that reveres some of the tradition of Old Emory while attempting to negotiate successfully the trajectory of New Emory.

Examples of this challenge are not difficult to find. Demographic changes since 1960 have made Emory international, multi-ethnic, and many-hued. While these changes are significant and desirable, they create a tension between the ideal of diversity and its effect on community. Small communities mirror people’s common identity: ethnic, religious, class, vocational, avocational, and regional. Communities of shared identity and interest provide important support of individuals but may not facilitate a sense of participating in a larger and equally worthy enterprise.

Environmental changes, too, have left their imprint on community at Emory. Place has a powerful hold on memory and identity. When people leave Emory and reminisce about their experiences, they speak of the physical environment and of their favorite campus places. While Emory’s physical campus is beautiful, however, it does not always meet the requisites for strong community. Emory lacks the lively center of campus found at the great central plazas of some well-known universities—Harvard Yard, the Lawn at UVA, Berkeley’s Sather Gate. Ideally, an institution’s design and layout should convey a feel and style. History and tradition, the past and the future, the relation to nature and to the surrounding social world, intimate friendship and community how people work and play—all are projected strikingly and indelibly by a university’s use of space, husbandry of natural surroundings, and attention to detail.

Procedures
The problems investigated by CONTACT Emory are hardly unique to this university. Indeed the problem of community in growing and diversifying institutions is so widespread as to have become one of the major themes of the Carnegie Foundation’s special report on Campus Life: In Search of Community, by Ernest Boyer. Boyer concluded that recent declines in the quality of campus life in American colleges and universities are attributable in part to a widening separation between the activities conducted inside and outside the classroom. Students spend less time in intellectual pursuits, and they focus mainly on obtaining necessary academic credentials. These and other factors have a direct bearing on the cohesiveness of college communities.

But the concern of the CONTACT work was Emory. Striving for deep, general insight into the nature of community and a specific understanding of Emory’s history, tradition, and development, the committee read intensely about and discussed Emory’s history and organization. After developing an ambitious research agenda, the committee consulted as many members of the Emory community as possible to determine how they view and express their experiences of Emory, to identify common issues raised in these conversations, and to evaluate suggestions from nearly three thousand individuals.
CONTACT Emory sent an internet-based survey to all students, tenured and nontentured faculty, administrators, staff, parents, and alumni for whom reliable e-mail addresses were available. In addition, approximately 2,000 selected alumni leaders received printed versions of the survey, as did members of the Emory staff who might not have access to the internet and e-mail. An informal, unscientific, in-house opinion poll, the survey prompted 2,599 responses.

In face-to-face discussions, CONTACT Emory conducted focus groups with 55 graduate and undergraduate students, 18 faculty and staff members and administrators, and 30 alumni. Eight graduate students moderated the discussions, and their observations provided additional insight.

Visiting the campuses of Brown, Rice, and Stanford universities to determine how those institutions nurture community, the committee sought to establish comparisons and draw on the best practices of others. Teams of three or four CONTACT Emory members visited the other universities to read and evaluate their campus histories, gather promotional materials, meet with members of the community, tour and photograph the campuses, and form comparisons and conclusions applicable to Emory.
Finally, the committee prepared its observations and reported its recommendations to the President.

General Findings
The survey respondents and focus groups offered a trove of suggestions for Emory to consider. Community members generally approve of Emory as a place to work and study. Academically, Emory receives consistently high marks from both students and faculty. Current students generally praise the quality and commitment of their teachers; faculty members in the focus groups speak very positively about their academic relationships with students. Both students and faculty believe that establishing strong ties, both inside and outside the classroom, between students and faculty should continue to be a central priority of the University.

But the respondents also pointed out significant areas of life at Emory that need to be examined with a focus on ways to cultivate community. Overall, respondents are satisfied with their Emory experience. Approval seems to decrease, however, among more recent alumni. Parents of students were notably more positive than students, and students were generally more positive about Emory than either staff or faculty. These findings suggest that the more recent and direct the contact with Emory, the greater the likelihood to focus on problems.

Specific Community Dilemmas and Possible Solutions
Survey respondents voiced a dominant and recurring theme: given the scale and complexity of the University, Emory must assure that a sense of cohesiveness prevails. As Emory continues to grow, it must formulate innovative strategies to unite the community as a whole, while paradoxically supporting smaller communities important to a sense of belonging, loyalty, and pride. Emory must enable and sustain these micro-communities. At the same time, Emory must nurture the pride and loyalty that come with more encompassing campus-wide identity. Ceremonial events and traditions, occasions of social significance, and rites of passage can bring the whole community together. Emory should engage the community by acknowledging and drawing more frequently on the wellspring of its constitutive communities.

In addition to hearing this overarching need for festival, gathering, and ceremony, CONTACT Emory identified several specific dilemmas that suggest the possibility of concrete solution. These dilemmas are outlined below.

Dilemma One: The Campus Home and Housing
Although Emory is a residential campus, virtually all faculty and staff, as well as many students, live off-campus, often quite far from Emory. These circumstances make it difficult for non-campus residents to return after working hours, and consequently many never do, to the detriment of the community’s vigor.

To remedy this trend, Emory could sponsor more informal gatherings, regular social events, even parties and dances for faculty and staff at times closer to the end of the work-day, to alleviate the need for a return to campus. A more far-reaching plan, however, would find ways to help at least some faculty and staff live closer to the campus or, better, on campus. Stanford University has built many faculty houses and townhomes on its expansive campus. Columbia University is landlord to a vast number of its faculty members and graduate students. Rice University and other universities offer apartments to faculty members who serve as "masters" of residential facilities. These are but a few examples that Emory might draw upon.

For students, research indicates that alternative student living arrangements on campus could promote a stronger sense of community. As new residence halls are planned and built, apartment-style units should be included. Additionally, the University should implement a two- or three-year student residency requirement as soon as reasonably possible, to extend students’ experience of the campus as community and to damp the centrifugal forces that draw students away from the campus.

Most substantively, Emory should consider creating residential colleges. This alternative to current residential options for undergraduates would promote loyalty through association, revelry through competition, alumni involvement, and convivial interaction focused on specially planned events. Residential colleges would provide:

a home within the University for students and, potentially, faculty and staff;

a locus for development of traditions and rituals within a particularized setting;

a center for communal dining;

a student self-governance system that fosters leadership;

a non-exclusionary and demographically diverse complement to fraternities and sororities;

a place for students, faculty, staff, and alumni to interact outside the classroom; and

the opportunity to create smaller, randomly selected, living communities on campus.

Residential colleges would be costly to implement and therefore may or may not present a viable option for Emory. Phased implementation, however, might make residential colleges financially feasible at Emory. Other universities, such as the University of Pennsylvania, have recently made the transition to residential colleges, and the successes at schools such as Yale, Santa Cruz, Harvard, and Rice are well known. The life-long sense of identity and association with residential colleges—if instituted at Emory—might be considerable. By virtue of this single, but major, institutional change, many of the issues brought forward by this report that pertain to community and tradition would be addressed. The expense might well be justified.

In sum, the University should seek fresh ideas for student, faculty, and staff residential living to provide a campus home, spirited competition, meaningful tradition, cultural awareness, community interaction, leadership opportunities, and academic support. . . .

Dilemma Two: Food and Dining
Food and dining play a decisive role in community life. Currently the model most prevalent at Emory is the fast-food enterprise, exemplified in Cox Hall, or the cafeteria, exemplified in the Dobbs University Center. While it may be desirable to retain these quick and easy means of providing meals, other alternatives would slow the pace of life, offer more leisurely discourse, and, most importantly, bring people together in regular settings for shared experience.

Formal Meal Settings—The University should explore innovative means to unite the community in formal or ceremonial settings, revolving around meals, in addition to providing more spaces and opportunities for informal dining. Banquets such as the Charter Day Banquet, the Senior Banquet and the Alumni Weekend Luncheon are perhaps the most prominent examples.

Dining Societies—This social alternative might present a less costly answer to the establishment of residential colleges. Communal dining could, in different ways, shape the same sense of loyalty, group identity, and fond memory as residential colleges. Cautionary notes: such dining arrangements bring added costs, and societies of this kind . . . have . . . potential to be exclusionary. The latter problem may be alleviated through random selection of membership. Recognizing that dining together regularly is a way of bonding in smaller, intimate communities, students, faculty, staff, alumni and administrators should be included in these societies.

The Physical Environment:
Promoting Campus-Wide Community
The physical environment helps set the tone for those who live, work, and study at Emory. The architectural and artistic features, as well as landscaping, open spaces, and natural areas of the campus shape the shared memory of campus life. Places where people congregate, housing and living arrangements, areas in which to dine and work can be conducive to strong ties among the various segments of the University; in fact they are critical to the basic unity of campus community. These places for special events and spontaneous activities—eating and drinking, mixing and mingling—can foster a seamless academic and social life on campus.

Physical growth is necessary for academic development, and Emory is fortunate to be able to undertake such projects. But for twenty years, construction, congestion, and dislocation have disrupted daily routines as well as to the cohesiveness of the University community. Efforts should be made to minimize disruptions to the campus.

Campus Master Plan—Survey respondents affirmed the principal tenets of the Campus Master Plan and admire Henry Hornbostel’s original campus design. The University should promote a continued widespread dissemination of information about campus development, so that the Emory community members, including alumni, understand the benefits of renovated buildings and spaces and the philosophy behind the Campus Master Plan.

Every existing and planned campus facility, as well as the developed and undeveloped grounds of the campus, should be newly evaluated in terms of how it promotes interaction across disciplines; between students, faculty, and staff; and among individuals with common or diverse interests. Interior and exterior design should include consultation with those persons who will use the facilities and spaces. Some part of every building should include warm, intimate spaces that promote interaction, conversation, and community. The committee notes that Rice University requires every new building to include space for eating—whether it be a snack room, a deli, a grill, or a cafeteria.

Informal Indoor and Outdoor Gathering Places—Survey respondents overwhelmingly request more small and intimate spaces located conveniently around campus where faculty, students, staff, alumni and visitors can gather. Cozy hangouts, such as the Dooley’s Den of the 1970s and 1980s, are lost and lamented. [The Depot, formerly known as Cappuccino Joe’s, recently has been renamed Dooley’s Den in a nod toward this nostalgia for the old grill in the lower level of Cox Hall. Ed.] They should make a comeback. Other indoor areas, such as cafés with welcoming, pub-like atmospheres, small jazz and dance locales, and a speaker’s corner, would promote social interaction.

The Quadrangle and Lullwater—These areas are, according to survey respondents, the heart and soul of the Emory campus. CONTACT Emory applauds the design guidelines of the Campus Master Plan that seek to respect the natural environment through harmonious architecture and landscaping. A master plan for Lullwater should be completed.

[Editor’s note: In the spring of 2000, President Chace appointed the Lullwater Task Force to ensure that the boundaries of Lullwater are clearly established, physically maintained, and not encroached upon; to review all proposals for recreational, educational, or ecological use of Lullwater and make recommendations to the president of the University regarding the proposals’ environmental feasibility and their benefits to the community; to monitor Lullwater’s access points for pedestrians and bicyclists in order to ensure safety and environmental protection; and to explore opportunities to maintain and enhance Lullwater's ecological balance and reforestation and landscaping projects.]

Outdoor Areas—Survey respondents yearn for other outdoor areas and facilities suitable for spontaneous as well as planned activities; for quiet times and relaxation, music and performance. They desire a greater number of interesting focal points on campus, such as gardens, natural landmarks, and historical markers; meandering trails and pathways for biking, running and walking; fountains and pools, statuary, sculptures, benches, steps, gates and lamps; spaces and places—both whimsical and serious in design—for contemplation, reflection, and play. "Source Route," the environmental sculpture leading into the Baker Woodlands, is one of the few such spots on campus now. Soon a fountain and plaza will grace the area between Candler Library and Asbury Circle.

Campus Plazas—A carefully thought-out design for new campus plazas, lively in conception, dramatic in presentation and vital to campus life, should be undertaken and built. The renovation of North Kilgo Circle, between the Psychology Building and the Callaway Center, several years ago, serves as a dramatic example. Beckham Plaza, under construction between Candler Library and Asbury Circle, will provide another dramatic focal point for both visual appeal and spontaneous lounging.

Emory Village—Emory Village plays an important and memorable role at Emory as a social outlet for all parts of the community. The village has great but unfulfilled potential as a social adjunct to campus life. The committee notes and encourages the University’s continued collaboration with county officials and business neighbors on ways to improve the design, facilitate access, and, if possible, favorably influence the development of additional entertainment and service resources in the village.

Multi-Purpose Facility—Emory has no facility, other than the gymnasium and Glenn Memorial Auditorium, that can comfortably accommodate more than 550 people. If Emory intends to encourage large-scale events—from band concerts to major speakers such as the Dalai Lama—a large multi-purpose facility is essential.

History, Traditions, Rituals and Ceremony
Mindful that tradition, history, ceremony, and ritual stimulate devotion to university life and later induce fondness and loyalty, the committee encourages establishing, defining, promoting, and funding significant events on the Oxford and Atlanta campuses. These traditions and rituals—those established and those yet to emerge—should imbue Emory students, faculty, and staff with pride about Emory’s place in its home towns, as well as on the world stage. Such an understanding of Emory’s history and tradition should be foundational for the new student who begins an academic career at Emory and for other new arrivals to campus who come to work, teach, or administer.

CONTACT Emory recommends that Emory recapture and disseminate the lost pages of its history, so that those who come to the institution, as well as those who are already here, will know and appreciate the full measure and distinction of its history and prominence as an institution of higher learning. The goal should be to engage new students, faculty, staff, and administrators as early as their first contact with Emory—through whatever recruiting or admission processes capture them—in recognizing the scholarship for which Emory has attained renown and to understand what constitutes the Emory community.

New arrivals to campus should be able to gain, readily and early on, through organized orientation, an acquaintanceship with what Emory stands for and a sense of meaningful place for each individual. Emory should consistently articulate the mission, history, and traditions that define its community—as a foundation on which to build institutional pride.

During the on-site visits to other universities, CONTACT Emory members noticed, particularly at Rice, that markers and historical plaques carrying the University logo provided a coherent look and informative sense of place. At Emory, similar historical markers and descriptive plaques, tastefully affixed to buildings and other appropriate locations of architectural and/or historical interest—with information that could include dates, history, persons for whom buildings are named, the architect, as well as other significant facts or possibly anecdotes—would contribute to the historical knowledge of Emory. The Campus Master Plan should include a more detailed plan to identify and recognize Emory’s history in the physical environment.

Ritual Events—Rituals serve as a matrix for the community. CONTACT Emory recommends that a half-dozen University events should receive priority attention and resources to develop memorable occasions that will engage and unite the faculty, staff, alumni, students and parents as a community. These events include: Orientation, Alumni Weekend, Family Weekend, Charter Day, commencement and Heritage Homecoming. Identifying, emphasizing and promoting these defining events through the media will help assure their success.

CONTACT Emory also encourages the exploration and addition of serious, ceremonial rituals that emphasize academic rites of passage, especially at orientation and graduation. Some contend that the University lacks enough high ceremony. As incoming students embark on their redefinition of self, in the context of university life, they should feel ceremonially welcomed, celebrated, and eventually sent into the world as Emory alumni. Emory’s goal should be steadfast: to encourage solemn and majestic rites of passage to include the entire community.

Emory also should carefully select and amplify the meanings of the specific rites of passage associated with Emory University life. These ceremonies should be University-wide and should occur at all levels. Ceremonies could acknowledge the individual’s entrance into specific departments, offices, or disciplines at Emory, as well as graduation or departure. Emory should draw alumni into more active participation in these ceremonies of the University through carefully organized reunions—redolent of ritual, reintegration, and renewal—that reinforce life-long identity with the University. Faculty, staff, and students must be included in these activities.

Ritual and Play—A common impediment to community is the status and class differences that tend to compartmentalize members of a community. Ritual and play can be used to break down such barriers. Visits to other institutions suggest that larger gatherings which are playfully competitive create opportunities for whimsy to permeate the University experience. At Indiana University, for instance, annual tricycle races not only help to raise money for scholarships but also draw the avid attention and enthusiastic participation of all constituencies of the University and even of the community beyond the campus. Recreation can bear directly on the seriousness with which the University does its work; play potentially provides social counterbalance to an otherwise arduous academic experience.

Student, Faculty, Staff, and Alumni Concerns
Most survey respondents welcome the increasing diversity of the University. Some students, however, express feelings of estrangement the more they become identified with one or another of the various ethnic and social groups on campus. Ironically, students, particularly minority members, often do not experience diversity as affirming and unifying. Emory should help ground students in their own traditions, but it should also encourage interaction among groups to promote civility and a new understanding of community.

Graduate Students—Although the University’s efforts to improve community life for undergraduate students have been effective, equivalent attention should be paid to the needs of graduate and professional students. Graduate students desire interaction among academic departments. Graduate education by its nature can be isolating. The University should find ways to introduce satisfying community experiences into what might otherwise be a fragmenting time.

Faculty—The Emory faculty survey respondents described a level of stress created by their work expectations that prevents their full participation in and enjoyment of community. Faculty members encourage the University to find new ways, formally and informally, to recognize and celebrate faculty contributions to the Emory community. Many express a desire for further incentives and convenient locations that enable more engagement with students outside the classroom. Some faculty members suggested that more frequent opportunities to dine with students might help to develop new patterns of faculty/student interaction.

Faculty members ardently press for meaningful inclusion in the decision-making processes of the University, so that their voices are heard and their opinions thoughtfully deliberated at the highest levels. . . . The faculty would like to have their efforts further acknowledged by all levels of the administration.

Indeed, students, faculty, staff, and administration alike would appreciate the opportunity for a much higher level of interaction with each other outside their own departments, schools, and divisions. The University should facilitate these efforts.

Staff—The Emory staff is critically important to the life of the University. Many staff members embody community, often have the longest association within the community, and carry institutional history and memory. They invest themselves and their life-long work in service to Emory and thus enrich the campus.

Staff members participating in the focus groups indicated that they are generally pleased with their work environments, but they often feel undervalued by the University. The recently established program in Emory College for staff to propose study/travel grants serves as an innovative example of ways staff members can be recognized for their unique contributions to community life. As a vital segment of the University, the staff would like to be more engaged in the life and decision-making of the University.

Important to staff members is a sense of connectedness and opportunities for informal spaces. Staff members would like more outdoor facilities, as well as places where they can eat and relax during lunch and breaks. Emory might consider setting aside a day, or a series of days, when staff could earn release time from their responsibilities in order to sign up and participate in open classes. Staff members also would like all staff names and phone numbers listed in the Emory campus directory and suggest that the University sponsor an open house on campus, so that staff might visit different Emory divisions and learn more about the University.

Strong feeling that the current Staff Day is not effective is evident in survey and focus-group comments. University-wide recognition of staff and their accomplishments remains imperative; the character of Emory’s efforts in this regard should be re-evaluated and revised with input from staff. Some staff members have suggested that the University should consider providing subsidized housing closer to campus. In addition, Emory should promote the responsible use of flexible working options for staff. In general, Emory should encourage staff participation in University events.

Alumni—Alumni generally register a high degree of satisfaction both with their Emory experience and with the degrees they earned at the University but speak of a lack of memorable traditions. They also see tremendous value in continuing to be involved in the larger University community. This feeling is particularly true among Emory’s large number of Atlanta area alumni. Many alumni express regret that they have far less contact with Emory than they would like; they wish to participate more frequently in University events and in governance.

Given that alumni desire closer contact and involvement with the on-going progress of the University, Emory should more actively engage alumni through renewed efforts in communication, events, mentoring, educational and leadership opportunities, career networks and an on-line community. Along these lines, the Association of Emory Alumni in recent years has launched new communications opportunities on the Web, has instituted a career-mentoring network, and has revised most of its educational and travel programs. The new Miller-Ward Alumni House, opened this summer, will address some of these concerns and will provide a convivial place for alumni to return to the campus for occasions large and small.

Other Concerns
Among the disparate comments, suggestions, and insights gathered in the survey and focus groups, several themes surfaced that bear attention.

Publicize, Communicate, Disseminate—Publicity is a serious matter. The University should develop and refine a compelling marketing strategy to promote community-building events. Such an integrated and continuing effort will give added awareness to campus events and improve the outside perception of Emory as a vital community. Guidelines should be agreed upon and applied to all campus divisions.

Increased Visibility and Interaction of Senior Administrators—Noting that the President, the vice president for Institutional Advancement, and other officers of the University teach regularly, the committee encourages all senior administrators to interact more with students, faculty, staff, and alumni. The symbolic importance of these contacts would be considerable and would set the tone for the rest of the University to do likewise.

Campus-Wide Forums—Emory should plan town meetings (physical or virtual) and campus reports, which can allow participants from different divisions to put forward their perspectives on important University topics. Periodic feedback through direct letters/e-mail messages from the President/Provost/Deans to students, faculty, and staff is important to an understanding of issues.

Academics and Arts—A festival week that brings together examples of student and faculty scholarship, fine arts, and performing arts would help bridge the division between work and recreation. The new performing arts center, strongly affirmed by respondents, will provide both learning and artistic opportunities for Emory and will promote outreach to the greater Atlanta community.

Sporting Events—One of Emory’s great legacies is a strong program in intramural sports (one of the first such programs in the country when it was begun in the 1890s). Since 1986 and the formation of the University Athletic Association, of which Emory is a founding member, the University has distinguished itself in NCAA Division III competition. Emory can therefore consider, without violating its heritage, giving sporting events renewed prominence. Intramural sports between residence halls can be emphasized. Emory should better communicate and highlight its tradition of "athletics for all," that is, sporting events in which anyone can participate. Emory should encourage and expand friendly rivalries in intramural sports, perhaps among dorms, residential colleges, or eating societies. The intense and engagingly competitive nature of sport has a special power to galvanize the self-awareness, pride, unity and identity of a community—to build school spirit. A pep band, special musical concerts coinciding with games of special importance, invitations to the wider community to attend significant matches—all of these efforts might attract students, staff, faculty, alumni and members of the neighborhood to participate in Emory’s anticipated sportive triumphs.

Many survey respondents encourage the University to invest more heavily in highly visible sports, particularly football; others do not see big time sports as an appropriate solution. CONTACT Emory does not recommend football or participation in Division I sports, yet we heard these responses about sports too often to leave them unmentioned. This issue speaks to a perceived absence in the social life of the campus that must be taken seriously and addressed by innovative means.

A Final Note
This report clarifies some of the challenges that must be addressed in shaping a vibrant community. CONTACT Emory presents these suggestions with the hope that they will prepare the way for innovation, experimentation and the betterment of the Emory community.

For these recommendations to be realized, the University must continue to balance fresh ideas with old traditions and give them clear and frequent consideration and articulation by University leaders at the highest levels. Those in leadership must remain attuned and ready to act on proposals worthy of strengthening community. With education as our foremost responsibility, each level of the University must contribute intentionally and thoughtfully to promote the interplay of the academic and social; organize and publicize ceremonies inclusive of all; draw on the resources of our large and small communities for the benefit of the whole; and embrace with honor our individuals—all in the pursuit of learning.

The Emory community must evolve naturally, with the strong roots of tradition taking hold organically in the unique soil of the University’s culture and community. We must recognize, however, that the crucial nutrients of community life—those contributing to our personal relationships, molding our interests and enthusiasms, and making our memories bloom—may seem intangible, but are attainable. Emory’s objective should be to lay the groundwork, deliberately undertaken and followed by careful cultivation so that the community flourishes.

Respectfully submitted,

Suzann Arnold ‘00C

Bob Carpenter
Former Executive Director
Association of Emory Alumni

John J. Carroll ‘83MBA

John W. Gilbert
Associate Vice President
Institutional Advancement

Jodi L. Gup
Director
Emory Parent Program

Vicki Kaplan Haberman ‘81C

Laura J. Hardman, ‘67C

Samuel Tito Jackson ‘98Ox-‘00C

Darnita R. Killian
Dean of Students

Sally Wolff-King ‘79G-'83PhD
Associate Dean
College of Arts and Sciences

Susan Cooper Ladson ‘68C

Gerald B. Lowrey ‘81PhD
Interim Executive Director
Association of Emory Alumni

Lynn Magee
Executive Administrative Assistant
Emory University

Robert G. Pennington
‘74Ox-'76C-'81MBA-'81L
Chair, CONTACT Emory

Karen M. Salisbury
Assistant Dean and Director of Student Activities

Bradd Shore
Professor of Anthropology

Melissa A. Trifiletti