The University, the city and you

BY JOHN V. MOESER
Senior Fellow, Bonner Center for Civic Engagement — Professor Emeritus of Urban Studies and Planning, VCU

You are fortunate to attend a university named after the city of Richmond, Va. Richmond’s history is so entwined with the history of the nation that to know what happened here is to know many of the most formative events that shaped the American republic.

There are larger and more prominent cities than Richmond and cities that are far more ethnically diverse. There are more beautiful cities than Richmond and cities that are more forward thinking, but few cities in the country have a history that captures so completely and plunges so deeply the full drama of the United States.

Lewis Mumford, perhaps the preeminent historian of the world’s urban civilizations, observed, “Time becomes visible in the city.” Richmond’s history is visible in its cobblestone streets and alleys, its church steeples and domed sanctuaries, its brick and granite buildings, its old neighborhoods, period houses and office buildings, its monuments and, of course, its cemeteries. The natural environment itself bears witness to Richmond’s past with the James River the single most important natural feature. The rush of water against ancient rock has remained largely unchanged since Indians settled this site thousands of years ago. This history is what gives the metropolis a sense of place and provides a psychological core to the entire region.

If you really want to know the place where you go to school, and I hope you do, then what you learn about Richmond and its people can be as important to your intellectual growth as the courses you take. Knowing Richmond gives context for knowing other cities and the metropolitan areas where 80 percent of the nation’s population live today. The more you learn about Richmond, the more interesting you will find many of your classes, since you will have a context for illustrating or better understanding what you are studying.

I hope you will go a step further by meeting and developing personal relationships with a wide variety of Richmonders. You will find that people interpret Richmond’s past differently depending largely on their race, nationality, religion and social background. The glory years for some were years of human bondage and suffering for others.

Attitudes shaped long ago led to segregated neighborhoods, schools and social inequities that, while not as far reaching as they once were, are still evident in many quarters of our city. By getting to know people who reside in different parts of the city, you will learn different life stories and aspects of city history that you otherwise would never know. You will learn how those varied stories and histories still collide, sometimes leading to animosities that divide us still.

Yet, you may also learn how people of different races and social backgrounds have stepped across the divides and through honest, often painful, sharing of personal stories, have experienced reconciliation and found redemption for themselves and their community.

I hope that while you are a student you will find time to volunteer with one of the hundreds of nonprofit organizations of Richmond that provide health care and mental health services, tackle illiteracy and lack of affordable housing, work with troubled children and youth, shelter abused women, help lonely and isolated seniors, and confront such problems as crime, unemployment, homelessness, drugs, teen pregnancy and discrimination.

These organizations are starved for assistance, both material and personal. Moreover, your involvement in such work can change your life. Witnessing the conditions under which so many Richmonders live, becoming a part in efforts to address those conditions, and knowing by name some individuals whose biggest challenge in life is simply getting through the day, can have a profound impact on your thinking. Experiences like that can deepen your inquiries and lead to greater insight.

Your years at the University can be the most formative years in your life and mark the time when you became so captivated by learning that you embarked on a lifetime of discovery. What you learned most about life may have occurred when you volunteered at an inner-city job training program where you lunched everyday with a single father learning how to restore furniture, or when you volunteered at a senior center where you made friends with an elderly widow living in public housing. Neither may have finished high school, yet both may have possessed such deep understanding about life and exhibited such wisdom about the important things of life that they became your greatest teachers. Your many privileges might have seemed like an enormous gulf between you and them, but they were the ones who closed the gap with gentleness and love. They were the ones who restored your soul.

Whatever happens during these years is really up to you. My hope is that they will be life-changing and that what you learn at this University, in this great city, from the wonderful people of this city, will expand your mind, deepen your understanding and—above all—quicken your heart. If that happens, you will graduate with honors.

John Moeser gave this talk to incoming first-year students at UniverCity Day in September 2006.