VCU’s community involvement needs to be taken nationally

Shane Wade
Opinion Editor

During summer vacation, I traveled to Brooklyn, N.Y., where I stayed across the street from Pratt Institute, a private college for art and architecture. While there, I found an interesting parallel between Pratt and our own school: the manner in which the two colleges – one public, one private – had integrated themselves into the city that surrounds them.

This is an easy task, as I soon found out. While one can easily distinguish where Pratt ends and New York begins, I shudder to think about what Richmond would be like without VCU.

That’s because VCU has so successfully become part of Richmond, and it’s difficult to tell who owns what.

Take the Chesterfield Building on Franklin Street, across from Ginter House and down the street from Brandt, Johnson and Rhodes. Separated by a few yards, most people unacquainted with the area would be unable to figure out whether the Chesterfield Building was part of VCU property or not. This confusion is added to by the presence of the Virginia Book Company located underneath it.

The reason I find this integration to be significant is because it forces VCU to consider how it affects the surrounding community, for the benefit of both students and city residents. To that end, VCU must reinvest in the community in order for VCU itself to thrive, as seen by our caretaking of Monroe Park, which is owned by the city of Richmond but maintained by VCU. That’s why VCU takes offenses made by students against the community so seriously.

The areas of Richmond that surround VCU’s campuses are a reflection of our school. If those areas are unsecured, VCU is unsecured. If those areas are rundown and unclean, VCU is rundown and unclean.

This is both the crux of VCU and a symbol of its greatness. Richmond is great because VCU is great and vice versa.

Reinvesting in the Richmond community is symbolic of something that needs to occur on both the state and national level. I recognize the nature of our current economic state, the divisiveness of our politics and the urge for spending cuts, tax cuts and a reduction in all functions of government. But I also recognize that what makes America great is all that our government is able to do for Americans.

That’s how we built a middle class that drew immigrants to our shores.

That’s how we brought the country together, started rationing programs and helped win World War I and World War II.

That’s how we won the space race and put a man on the moon.

When we stopped increasing the budget of programs like NASA and rerouted that money to intervene militarily in foreign nations, in the words of Neil Degrasse Tyson, we stopped dreaming.

Just as VCU has brought life to Richmond, whether it be through a fantastic basketball season or by investing in construction projects that bring jobs to Richmond and students to VCU, Washington needs to bring life back to America. We have the means, resources and, believe it or not, the money to do great things.

The reason we aren’t is because of how we redistribute that money. Instead, we fund foreign and domestic wars, give tax breaks to the wealthy, maintain inefficiencies in bureaucracy and maintain a status quo with corporate tax evaders.

It’s times like these – when wars are prevalent, when politics divide us, when jobs are scarce – that we need to remember that we are the people, we are the government and we are all Americans. By replicating the actions of institutions like VCU and reinvesting in our community we can better focus on our domestic issues.