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Where
Are You Comin' From, Where Are You Goin' To:
Participation Over Time For Face--whether individual or communal--to have lasting impact and recognition, it must be visible over the cycle of phases. Students who are rarely on campus, or who live off campus, are less likely to feel a sense of belonging in any campus community unless they make an effort to participate in campus events and organizations. New students, whether transfer students or freshmen, must let their Face be seen before they are recognized and acknowledged by members of the campus community. Several informants admitted feeling uncomfortable and alienated during the transition period of relative "invisibility," when their Faces were not yet "seen." Informants who commuted long distances to campus, or who said they were too busy with schoolwork to get involved in organizations, attend events, or hang out, said that they didn't feel they were a part of campus -- or any campus community. Chris, for example, said he wasn't involved in any on-campus programs during his first semester, because he commuted to campus from L.A. "I just came to school, went home, came to school, went home," he remarked. For hangouts and other gathering places to remain popular, communal Face must be obvious. If too few community members show up at a particular location, the location will lose its association with the community. The location will no longer be placed as the shared territory of a particular community, except as a remembered phase of the past. As will be explained further in the "Kickin' It: Hangouts" section, once-popular hangouts may remain "alive" through personal accounts and community "legends": Word of Mouth. Zowdi, a member of the Black sorority Da Leideez, thought
the front of the Union was losing its reputation as a hangout for Black
students, since she had noticed a decrease in the number of students gathering
there: Emerald has stopped hanging out at the Union because she
finds fewer friends there, and more freshmen: "most people who used
to hang out there last year don't hang out there this year." She
adds:
Nor do all Black students have a desire to have their Face seen at places such as the Union. Some informants preferred to spend their time in private spaces around campus, including the library, or at home. Others had spent time at hangouts such as the Union or as members of organizations such as the BSU and had decided to not show their Face there any longer. Some informants emphasized that they did not hang out at the Union, even though I saw them there on more than one occasion. I had the distinct impression that they worried about being placed as idle and lazy rather than diligent and studious. The same dominant racist ideology that portrays all Black women as welfare mothers places all Blacks as not wanting to work. Informants may have anticipated being placed according to this ideology. Students contested such placement (but not the ideology) by contrasting their own behavior with that of students who gathered at the Union. Zowdi, for example, claimed:
Emerald also distanced herself from the Union hangout she once frequented, because she did not want to be associated with the students who went there: "I also see people who hang out there, who don't go to classes, I don't want to be around people like that, because they're just going to try and convince me from going to class or anything else." Both Zowdi and Emerald made it clear that in not sharing the social and physical territory of the Union, they did not share in the "idleness" of students who gathered there, students they themselves placed as "idle." Individual students can "speak" with their Face by making it disappear -- removing their Face from community events and gathering places. Emerald, for instance, quit volunteering for the Alpha Phi Alpha fashion show because she felt a lack of shared ideological territory between the volunteers and the organizers. She claims that the fraternity brothers who organized the event consistently arrived late at meetings and yet constantly reminded volunteer models to be punctual themselves. Organizers, she says, also made disparaging comments about the models, comments that did not place Emerald how she wanted to be placed:
Several months after her interview, however, Emerald mentioned that she would be participating as a model in the upcoming Alpha Phi Alpha fashion show. This section on Face discussed the different aspects of
Face such as race, gender, dress, in the know, participation in events,
and participation overall. Face, however, is often placed in context with
Word of Mouth, which is the topic of the following section.
Next> Word of Mouth
Placing and Black Students' Discursive Construction of Community Copyright (c) 1996, Corinna J. Moebius |