Eastern Mennonite University - Shenandoah Yearbook (Harrisonburg, VA)

Page 19 text:

Honesty, trust, and confrontation are all necessary to have a true community. | question if it is possible to have a community with a thousand members; but if it is, how does EMC measure up? From my vantage point on the Senate | find us to be sadly lacking. There is a lack of trust by both the students and the administration because neither is honest with the other. In this atmosphere, confrontation is looked upon as a threat instead of a mutual seeking for the best path. To form a community, students must be willing to bow to the voice of experience and the administration must not think that its dictates are “handed down from God.” Both students and administration must realize that they each have an equal stake in maintenance of the college. — student ee Se | Jim Buller, Judy Brunk 15

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Joe Goldfus, Tobi Brenneman Gloria Rutt The distinctive strength of our community lies in its diversity, yet much of this diversity is not allowed to surface. Each of us should be made to feel as though the distinctive insights of our particular discipline are needed to challenge the thinking of the group as a whole. Are we too confident of the truth as we have it to sense the real need we have for further light in many areas, or are we too afraid of the possibility that open discussion of differing points of view might result in deeper tension? — faculty

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Community is where God is working in giving meaning, health, joy and love through Jesus. | think the question of whether EMC is achieving community is irrelevant. Community is not acheived. It is the spontaneous outgrowth of the Spirit of God moving in individuals. The institutions are a mere physical setting for the reality. The organizations are peripheral to the workings of Jesus. | find myself disliking the sort of uptight measuring we do to discover the degree of com- munity at EMC. Frankly, | don’t give a rip if there are ten more prayer groups this year than last. | am just unbearably excited about the fact that I’m a part of God's family. EMC can become so much a family that it becomes stifling. | sometimes want to run away from all the patriar- chal figures and start singing and shouting and crying on the stage of the world. But, | can stand it when | think of the last time | prayed with a good friend. At times like those, | am convinced that EMC was God-initiated and | can forgive its institutional status. —student Experience seems to divide more than unify the campus residents. Each person goes his own way and avoids encountering different viewpoints by keeping to his own circle of friends. — student Hilda Shirk, Robin Miller iii) Yaad Jeanette Noll, Herman Bontrager