BY JOE PETRICK
Vice President of Student Life
Question 1: How is Poultney different from Boston or NYC and why is that important?
Apart from lots of undeveloped land, free-range chickens, and llamas with main streets that close down when the big cities are just beginning to come alive, people act differently. People put out roadside vegetable stands unattended with a price list and an open basket for you to pay. The book stores have negotiable prices and the books are without electronic tags and theft buzzers. People are more trusting and more honest, at least in these respects. There is a refreshing sense of freedom, a lot less stress, and a greater sense of optimism. Yet, this is a fragile environment, very susceptible to change. As out-of-town people take advantage of the unattended stands and farms, lock boxes and other security devices begin to appear. The small town begins to become like the big cities in negative ways – there is a negative homogenization.
Question 2: What does Question 1 have to do with GMC?
Like the town, there is an open and trusting atmosphere in “This Green Place”. Students leave their residence hall doors open and freely lend out their property. Yet this too is a fragile environment. As belongings and precious stone display are stolen from halls and rooms, more doors are locked and fewer displays and playful creatures are free to enjoy. Theft and vandalism harm more than belongings –
they rob us of a way of life and simple pleasures that have disappeared from the camera-on-every-block cities like D.C. or London and are beginning to disappear here. The thief is like the invasive species which blots out the indigenous plant.
Question 3: Great, but what is the point?
Small towns are not better than big cities, nor are the people who live in them, but they have diverse values worth preserving. We value cultural diversity as we do value diversity in the natural world. The trust and openness in the small town and our Green campus are important to protect and preserve. As a liberal arts college with an environmental mission, we need to ask what we must socially protect, why, and how we should do it.
Question 4: Footprints, Leave No Trace, The Prime Objective and the Respect Test .The national discussion on Sustainability focuses on the natural environment and has been relatively silent on the social environment (social justice being an exception). Yet the natural environment metaphor of “footprint”, and relatedly, “Leave No Trace,”
can provide us with some helpful direction in social sustainability. Just as we want to minimize the human impact on the environment, we want to minimize the destruction of local and international cultures by non native cultures.
In the old Star Trek movies, there was a “Prime Directive” which prohibited interference with the social development of another planet. Though this originally meant you were not to introduce new technology into an “alien culture”, it can also be interpreted as “no conflicting customs or cultural values.”
Hence, you need to understand the unstated values, attitudes and patterns of behavior in a community and respect them. Respect, in its most central sense, means to consider others and not just yourself and your desires when you act.
Question 5: Where do you draw the line?
Of course, there are some actions which on the face of things should be changed regardless of the impact of that change on the native culture. Genital mutilation seems to fit this kind of needed change. Others are open to question. Vermont, for instance, seems to favor nudity. Hence the town ordinances of Brattleboro allow you to walk nude in town and the culture of GMC seems to include streaking. On these more borderline cases, perhaps we should defer to the native culture, though streaking may not be the same if it were sanctioned and drew little attention.
