The meanings of campus space

Louie Ulman (English) forwarded an article from the Chronicle that speaks to the heart of Walkscape. "The Power of Place on Campus" by Louis Broussard talks about the importance of creating a variety of "sacred spaces" on campus--"among them ritual or ceremonial spaces, processional or exploring spaces, perspective-dominant spaces, and refuge spaces."

A true learning environment provides for both formal instruction and learning that takes place without instruction. Informal learning touches more than just the cerebral — it combines the head, the heart, and the gut. For example, think about reading Thoreau in a sacred space rather than at one's desk in a dorm room. Imagine ad hoc outdoor classrooms designed near an English department's traditional classrooms. Students returning to campus decades later will remember those moments and spaces where knowledge turned into wisdom.

Talk about "the sacred" probably makes some of us nervous; I'd probably rephrase it as "spaces of value," places that mark, enable and intensify a particular kind of emotional or affective state. Mirror Lake is, for me, at least potentially one of those places: beside the library, near the street, in the midst of things but set apart, quiet and motion (the fountain of inspiration) kept in balance.

Broussard makes an obvious but excellent point: that universities are, for many students, sites of crucial emotional and intellectual growth. The space of the campus will be integrated into all sorts of stories of identity-formation--stories of separation (loneliness), discovery (excitement), risk, fear, courage and exultation, and re-affiliation (longing and belonging). Memories are being, intensely, made. How can the campus be cultivated to support and connect these memories into a sense of character?