The Community Issue
September 14, 2015
This week WSN explored the concept of community at NYU, something famously elusive in our sprawling university. Community is something different for everyone. It may be a club, a sports team, a makeshift family or one close friend. In an effort to understand how our community works, we asked several photographers to capture what the word means to them in a series of photo essays. We also opened the question to the rest of the student body by photographing NYU students on the street and asked what community is for them.
Portraits of your community
“this program seemed better suited for me versus NYU Tisch. It is a smaller group of people, with a focus on classical background going into contemporary.” -Alex Gudhe ’17
How did you guys become friends? “We just like met randomly. We were just on the street waiting for something in line and just started talking.” -Tom Fogele ’19, Ginnila Perez’19
“So, I was down to 3 options and ended up choosing New York because I found out something about my major (the global health part) and thought that it was perfect. I want to go into medicine and work for a company like Doctors Without Borders” -Grace Yun ’19
What made you decide on NYU? “I come from a suburb form the Midwest so there isn’t much diversity there. I really wanted to have a lot of experiences that would help me develop as a person” -Elizabeth Ha ’19
“I was hesitant whether to apply to Film and TV at Tisch or Business with Stern. At the time, I was just like “follow my dreams” so I picked Tisch hoping to do an Econ minor or major moving forward.” -Shobhit Jain ’17
What made you choose Stern? “I chose Stern because I want to go into business. I work in cosmetics as a make-up artist and I want to transition into the corporate side of that and thought that Stern was the best way to do that.” -Jordana Rosenzweig ’19
Community is a fickle thing, especially at NYU where living off campus and being detached from everyone is cool. A lot of the community that I’ve found in my short time here has been through NYU programs, as much as it pains me to say it because I lose the small amount of credibility that I have. But I think that it’s ok because it’s helped me to realize that what makes NYU’s community, or lack thereof, are the micro communities that thrive under it.
These photos are from camping with people in residence halls, residence life and a day trip with the people from my CAS cohort.
A common misconception NYU’s student community is that it’s virtually non-existent. Many applicants are discouraged by the decentralized campus and disjunct student communities. At first, I had similar concerns. However, after spending some time walking through the bustling roads and pathways in and around Washington Square Park, I’ve found the opposite to be true. While taking pictures and interviewing for this article, I’ve met an array of cool, talented, and unique individuals (some of whom are featured here). We aren’t a conventional community. We are scattered around the vast and crazy city that is New York, but we are brought together by our rich and weird personalities.
A lot of people say there isn’t much of a community at NYU. They obviously haven’t studied abroad. I spent my freshmen year in London and as a result I have an amazing community. Throughout the years I’ve become closer with individuals I didn’t even know that well in London. But, the fact that we spent our freshmen year abroad gives everyone a strong bond to each other. During our sophomore year at The New York campus we met some students that spent their freshmen year in Florence and some that spent it in Paris. Now, these kids are also part of our community. Going abroad is amazing. If you don’t believe me just look at this collection of photographs over the past few years. If we hadn’t gone to a new country these photos wouldn’t exist and our community wouldn’t either.
Much like New York City, NYU is constantly in motion. We hustle up stairs, dodge across the street between speeding taxis and squeeze onto crowded subway trains. No matter our academic pursuits, we’re always searching, writing, analyzing and inventing. We are a community eager for knowledge and new opportunities that has no equal — a community perfectly at home in the city that never sleeps.