Daniel Warner, Campus Carrier Copy Editor
There is an idea that I have been wanting to put forward for a while. Preliminarily, we’ll call it the Creative Writing Center. I imagine a comfortably furnished room in Evans with shelves of literary magazines, student initiated publications, and resources on writing and publishing, staffed perhaps by tutors from the Writing Center who study creative writing. The room would serve as both an informal social or solitary atmosphere for studying or discussion, as well as a formal forum for open mic nights, workshops, club meetings and whatever other developments may result.
There is no centralized hub for the humanities at Berry College. Right now, the entities serving this role are the Memorial Library and Evans, neither of which are functionally ideal because there is some inconsistency in the events and services they offer and, when they do put on events, they have to reduce and displace the usefulness of their primary functions.
There are several peripheral organizations that exist (i.e., some student run writing initiatives like Writer’s Ink, and the more recognized offerings like Philosophy Society and Ramifications) but they are not united and have arguably minimal ability to expand or gain visibility. As a creative writing major, it is oddly difficult to find a consistent place and group for writing and for just the discussion of ideas. And, for people like me who are exceptionally bad at finding internal motivation, it is thus difficult to write at all outside of class assignments. Even more than that, it is difficult to find non-quantified, not directly curricular thoughtful discussion (not explicitly resume-building) within the humanities in general.
Berry has a tremendous quality of physical spaces available (the House of Dreams, Ford, the Jewel Box, the Cottages, etc.) that are underutilized and could stand to be used for more advantage. If new programs or entities are to stem out from the central platform of a Creative Writing Center, then they could utilize this space and could include: a new conference hosted at Berry, perhaps to replace the Southern Women Writers Conference which Berry hosted up until a few years ago, or a writer’s retreat, that could be held as frequently or infrequently as desired.
The “Voices” reading put on by the Women’s Studies department on March 20 is a perfect example of this type of utilization of a space and time to gather people of a similar interest. I present the format of this so vaguely in order to present how easily such events can be facilitated with such an open format of space, time and people. I really think it is as simple as that.
My focus on physical space is because the simplicity of the idea itself is a main contributor to its frequent oversight. However, just having that sometimes makes all the difference in terms of creating a central platform from which things can naturally develop. A form of Creative Writing Center would go a long way in empowering students or at least manifesting a visible presence that creates that empowerment and which can catalyze new ideas.
This is something that could benefit faculty as well as students, given that it would be an open, accessible space meant to foster inclusiveness rather than exclusiveness.
I feel like instead of tacking on the nursing program to our sole humanities building, we should be invigorating and developing the humanities. This is especially important now that we have newly established the creative writing major as of fall 2014. It is fundamentally important to be invigorating the existing programs, rather than just investing in progressive programs. And actually, if the interest of whatever the governing bodies of funding is in creating new things, then those should also be invested in. A hub for humanities would fall in line with either of these goals.
It seems negative and limiting that many clubs or unofficial student organizations arise at Berry to provide inclusion, but then often fade away. Some just add to the other factions on the fringe of seemingly insufficient curricular offerings. There is no uniting force, or dialogue between the existing peripheral organizations of the humanities.
This is especially true between the official and unofficial clubs, and between faculty and students. I feel that it is an unspoken but understood goal of the humanities to continually seek greater interdisciplinary, interdepartmental, extracurricular/curricular integration, as well as faculty and student integration.
I think that a Creative Writing Center could promote this objective. These are just preliminary ideas that have yet to be fully hashed out, but just think of what a dedicated space could do to unite these separate extracurricular and curricular entities.