I don't know what you can do with this, but I was thinking it and I want to share:

Have you ever been to a religious conference? When I went to the Union for Reform Judaism Biennial, it was packed with panels and plenaries and sessions. But it was also--in true Jewish fashion--filled with noshing and shmoozing and praying. It was overwhelming, but it was supposed to be complemented with reflection. I think those kinds of reflective conferences are out there and they work. Your colleagues are wrong. Redesign the conference.

Why are the conferences this way in the first place? Why is college (and many other institutional and educational spaces) structured this way. Why does our society so often shun silence? Whom does it serve?

INTRODUCTION:

I investigated the current state of the Bi-Co between Haverford and Bryn Mawr by examining various sources, such as survey responses, social media, data, and my own personal observations. Specifically, I looked at cultural and social influences that the schools have on each other, and the academic cooperation between the two schools.

Works Cited:

Brown, Wendy. "Chapter Five: Freedom's Silences." Edgework: Critical Essays on Knowledge and Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2005. Print.

Jones, Gayl. Eva's Man. Boston: Beacon, 1987. Print.

Rose, Abby. "Finding My Voice through Silence: Meditations on Freewriting." Serendip Studio's One World. 18 Sept. 2015. Web.

The concept of “ecological intelligence” proposed by Bower from my perspective involves the idea that people standing on the sides of others to think about themselves. This conception is mostly inspired from the article Vaster than Empires, and More Slow by Ursula Leguin.  From this article, I find everyone has empathy, but the ecological intelligence decides whether we can think from others’ perspectives.  The depth of the empathy decides people’s ability to sense the mood from others and ecological intelligence decides the ability to find out the thoughts from others’ perspective.

I was walking to breakfast on a crisp autumn morning when I noticed that one of the two trees flanking Pembroke Arch had a name tag. Over time, I became more well-acquainted with Bryn Mawr’s campus, and I found name plates on quite a few of the trees I pass by on my way to class or elsewhere. On their name tags, their identities are represented in two different denominations: their common name, and their scientific name. They might be adequate for someone who is only interested in enjoying their daily walk through the college’s arboretum, but to a person observing the trees with a view to ecological intelligence, the limits of their names become apparent, and even problematic.

C.A Bowers says that the steps we need to take towards achieving and implementing ecological intelligence are three-fold: “the transition from thinking of intelligence as an attribute of the autonomous individual”, understanding “how language carries forward the misconceptions and values of earlier thinkers who were unaware of environmental limits”, and “how to revitalize the cultural commons.” Bowers expresses the need to achieve these goals through “educational reforms that foster ecological intelligence” (Bowers, 44). I think education is a strong field in which the transition towards ecological intelligence can be made, but I think there are also other areas of society in which these ideas can be implemented.

Ecological Intelligence: An Idea

A classroom full of students. A School bell. Ring. Ring. Ring. The anticipation for the fun to come. For the freedom from the classroom. Recess. The innocence of childhood. Monkey bars. Slides. Swings. Games. The joyful sounds of children playing, unaware about the ever-changing world around them. There voices echoing across the school yard. Tag you’re it. Miss Mary Mack, Mack Mack… Step on a crack, break your mother’s back.