Brown & Blueprint is a TCU Senate initiative—students asking students. We're producing a review of how we live, learn, and build community within the physical spaces on campus. From your feedback, we'll put together a comprehensive review and recommend next steps forward for a student-centered and spatially equitable campus life.

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Who are we listening to?

Short and simply: you. Specifically, we're asking:

How are you building community in the physical spaces you are a part of?
How do you feel about your physical space?
In which ways might your physical space inhibit your ability to build the type of social community you envision?
What does spatial inequity look like to you?
What does a "vibrant and diverse" Tufts social life look like to you?

We are especially listening to students who feel like they are not seen on this campus, who feel under-invested in and under-prioritized. Physical space can mean your house, your dorm, your community center, your dining hall, your academic building, your Campus Center, your bathrooms, your outdoor quads—the options are limitless!

We are also soliciting feedback on the upcoming Capen Village development, an initiative to build 147 beds for junior and senior on-campus housing. In order to frame this community listening process with a specific tangible outcome, we are using the Capen Village as the first step in envisioning the type of social ecosystem we want to build at Tufts. We're asking:

What kind of social community would you like to see form as part of the Capen Village development?
How do you feel about themed social housing?
For a themed social housing system to offer creative and equitable social outlets, how should it operate?

How are we listening?

We're listening across a wide range of mediums, including:

LISTENING SESSIONS

Request a listening session with a member of the TCU Senate Administration & Policy Committee. A "listening session" is a one-on-one session between you and a senator, either as an individual student or with your social group or organization. We are happy to come to a club meeting, attend a house dinner, go out to coffee, eat at a dining hall—whatever you are most comfortable with! We can ask a few questions, or just listen entirely and write down your comments.

To request a listening session, fill out this form. You may also request a specific senator you'd like to speak with.

COURBANIZE MAPPING

Using the coUrbanize interactive mapping tool, we'll have booths across campus in dining halls, residential dorms, and the Campus Center where you can write comments onto a virtual 3D map of the campus that correlates your experience with a physical space to the physical space itself. How do certain physical spaces make you feel? What physical obstacles have you faced in those spaces toward building the type of community you envision? What would you change about that physical space? What aspects of that physical space make it a great place?

SPONTANEOUS TEXT-MESSAGE COMMENTS

As you walk around campus, keep an eye out for signage/posters with spontaneous survey questions you can answer on the go via a text from your phone!

POST-IT NOTE MAPPING

Throughout this month, we will host installations with campus maps printed out onto bulletin boards held at the Campus Center. We'll be asking you to stick onto the map how you have built community in certain physical spaces. What successful programming have you been able to hold in certain physical spaces? What made that space work well for that event and for that community? What are best practices that can be shared?

ANONYMOUS FEEDBACK

If you'd like to share open-ended comments without your identity attached, click here for an opportunity to submit feedback anonymously.

Why are we asking about this now?

The Student Life Review Committee (SLRC) Report identified “equitable access to campus space for a wider variety of student groups and organizations as a means to support a healthier and more vibrant campus life.” These ideas are the foundation for continued action toward a sustainable, more inclusive and more fun student social experience.

Under our current system, we are all deprived of a social ecosystem that truly allows us to connect with one another’s humanity across interests and across difference; a diverse and more equitable social life is therefore something that we all need to work on.

In order to continue this work, we must organize in solidarity across all areas of this campus to identify how students are interacting with and forming communities within their physical spaces. We need to document these experiences, discover best practices, assess areas for growth, and advocate for stronger spatial investment by the university.

This is why Brown & Blueprint is here to listen.