Eastern Mennonite University - Shenandoah Yearbook (Harrisonburg, VA)

Page 13 text:

| think we’ve experienced community in ways this year that we haven’t before. Our views didn’t become more alike, but our acceptance of that person and his views became more real. On the other hand, there have been times when we didn’t experience community; and those times were when someone said, “My experience is the only valid experience and you must have it too.”’ Hubert Pellman — student aon Elton Horst Irene Kanagy

Page 12 text:

If anything, this year | have sensed a greater degree of polarization on campus than heretofore. Perhaps because of the charismatic tendency in the air beyond our campus, this emphasis has been accented in our public gatherings this year. This shift was accentuated when the structure that developed for the fall meetings promoted “experience” to the hilt. As a result, a great many of our finest and most ex- emplary students and faculty were unable to conscien- tiously throw their weight behind what others thought was a vital movement of the Spirit in our midst. The “immedia- cy” that was stressed in the public meetings tended to overlook the manner in which the Spirit functions through our class preparations. Tensions developed between the approach of IDS and courses in Biblical studies on the one hand, and those who were convinced that breadth and depth of study should give way to a direct reliance on the Spirit who would provide ‘‘ready-made” insights as needed, on the other. Some dialogue has taken place in isolated situations, but the basic dichotomy is still with us. — faculty Ruth Lehman, Robert Maust Community comes into being when individuals, who are basically at peace with themselves and their past, find themselves in a context in which they feel accepted as persons to the point where they dare to think that their deepest insights and concerns will not only be given a hearing, but will actually be solicited and appreciated as their distinctive contribution to the whole. — faculty

Page 14 text:

Community is hard to find on this campus — but it does exist. It’s not found in flashing, self-sufficient neon signs or in the blast of a brassy horn. You can find it here and there in dusty corners or the plainness of a quiet face among the crowd. We must get out of ourselves and start reaching out for others if we are to have community among us. We've got to be free to be real. — student Darrell G. Miller Joan Miller During the year, such occasions as the unique amount of student involvement in the fall revival week, the student partici- pation in the conference on the Holy Spirit, the development of student groups for gospel teams, for low cost housing, for student participation in Probe ‘72, and other similar experiences are evi- dence that Christian community is the very real dynamic at EMC. — faculty