A&S Dean Welcomes New Students with Invitation to Embrace the Power of Building Community
On the eve of their first day of classes in the University of Virginia’s College of Arts & Sciences, nearly 3,000 first-year and transfer students gathered on the Lawn Monday morning to mark the beginning of their entry to a new community.
At an event known as their First Lecture, delivered by Christa Acampora, the Buckner W. Clay Professor of Philosophy and Dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, students were urged to recognize that they have the power to make UVA the distinctive place that it is through the power of gathering: “Gathering is not just about being present, but about contributing to and participating. It is how our community becomes stronger and more vibrant. There is real power in this.”
This power takes on even greater significance in this presidential election year as political differences threaten to divide, Acampora continued.
“College campuses are often at the heart of political and social discourse, and it's essential to remember that our strength lies in our ability to come together despite differences, to actually do things together,” she said. “To learn from and with each other, to discover, to create together. That is how people belong.”
Creating a legacy for future generations
To illustrate how acts of gathering have transformative potential across cultures and at different times in human history, Acampora referenced a variety of forms of gatherings, including Minyons (required quorums of Jewish adults) for certain religious obligations in Judaism, the “ring shouts” where enslaved laborers connected with each other and experienced moments of freedom through song and dance.
Acampora asked students to also view UVA’s Academical Village as another example of a vision for gathering in which students, professors and other members of the university and Charlottesville communities are brought together in ways that shape them and the community at large.
“Mr. Jefferson's vision for a new, distinctive institution of higher learning was built around certain forms of [gatherings] that it could and would convene,” she said. “Over the course of two centuries, the University has evolved and expanded opportunities for gathering here. As a university community, we are much larger, more diverse, and globally minded and connected, and I think we more closely resemble and reflect Jefferson's educational ideals for this nation's first true liberal arts university.”
With that in mind, Acampora encouraged the new students to take opportunities to participate in the community. That truly is their superpower, she said.
“Use your superpower. If you do, you will make your own experience better and that of your classmates, and you will create a legacy for future generations, one that you are able to enjoy that others created, that you're able to enjoy now,” she said.
“I want you to truly think about this superpower when you have opportunities to connect and engage with others in the days, weeks, and months ahead. And when I say this, I am not telling you to pursue every leadership position you can, win every competition, get in the mix of every social organization. In fact, what I’m saying is quite the opposite: Do not only embrace opportunities to lead, and don’t see the alternatives to leadership as simply following. Look for ways to use your superpower of gathering in being the community that makes UVA what it is.”
There are distinctive features of the UVA community that lend its gatherings so much potential, Acampora said. It’s a community characterized by the creativity of its students and the distinct gatherings they generate to celebrate, commemorate, and have fun, she explained.
“I’ve observed something about how belonging happens here. It is a place where people speak openly and often about love, and about an aspiration for a loving community, even as people acknowledge that the journey to that goal is not complete,” Acampora said. “It is a community that relishes mirth. This is a place that gathers to make and have fun.”
Communities that can create such opportunities for shared joy are strong and vibrant, Acampora said.
“But none of this happens simply by accident, or only through rich traditions, which we certainly have here at UVA,” she said. “That is the nature of UVA's invitation to you: gather and convene here. To learn, to love, to explore, to discover and create together. … This is an extraordinary privilege that we have the opportunity to seize and protect. You seize it by showing up. You protect it by listening in a deep way to those with whom you disagree. When you are protecting the possibility of our gathering in an academic community, you care more about being open to the ideas of others than you do about shouting others down or shutting them out, sure that your perspective is the only one that matters.”
Concluding with a plea for students to “seize and use your superpower to create and be part of the distinctive gatherings here,” Acampora told them those efforts would serve to make their own experience better, and those of their classmates.
An empowering message
Following the First Lecture, clusters of new students lingered to introduce themselves to Acampora.
Chelsea Lobus, a first year from Williamsburg, Virginia, said many students might arrive on Grounds thinking that their admission was an invitation to be personally shaped by UVA.
“But it’s truly the opposite. There’s something truly empowering to be able to create such a strong community, even as a first year,” she said.
As a first-year student from the San Antonio area of Texas, Will Muck said he appreciated Acampora’s message.
“Individually, we’re so different, coming from so many different states and towns and countries, but we’re all coming together for one common goal at one university,” Muck said.
Olivia Smith said she was heartened by the Dean’s message of embracing each other’s stories and differences.
“Dean Acampora’s words really resonated with me in terms of UVA being a place where you can engage in respectful discourse,” said Smith, a first year from Connecticut. “A place where all opinions are not only welcome but topics for discussion that everyone should engage in, and that we don’t shy away from … In many ways, we’re defined by the struggle of trying to understand each other, and that struggle is critical to our community. It really re-affirmed for me that UVA is the place for me because there is room for everybody.
“When you’re surrounded by thousands of different people and thousands of different opinions, you worry that you’re going to get lost in all of this discourse, but the fact that we are able to have that discourse in a respectful, engaging manner, I think is a defining feature of UVA.”
