FaceTime at Wellesley College
A Panel of Faculty Notables**With contributions from student panelist Anna Friedman '04 and audience member Larissa Ranbom '02
Discussing FirstClass's Community Conference
Everyone got to meet these notables face-to-face, in real time. (Well, except for Flick, who appeared via teleconference from Madison, Wisconsin.) FirstClass is the communication software used at Wellesley College; the Community conference is a campus-wide electronic forum on FirstClass, open to all members of the Wellesley College community and to all topics of conversation. At two different FaceTime sessions, we heard several Wellesley College faculty members, well-known for their active participation on Community, talk about talk on FirstClass: why they participate on Community, what they get out of it, and what has happened there that they think is important.
Listen to excerpts below for some juicy bits from the two FaceTime panels or click here for the full text and audio version of the discussion, and more background information about the event. These audio clips were recorded live on the day of the event. We realize that the sound is not high quality, but we would like to provide this as an auditory record of the event. If the sound quality is troublesome, we recommend reading the full text version of the discussion. We have picked out our favorite pithy quotes from each section.
What is Community?You can characterize it as full of sound and fury, signifying something, and one of our tasks is to figure out what that something is that it signifies.
—Flick Coleman
Flick Coleman :00
Larry Rosenwald :33
Julia Miwa 1:02
Flick Coleman 1:18
André Isaak 1:52
Anna Friedman 2:42
FirstClass Identities There are people who probably have really unusual images of me if they've only read things I've written and never seen me in person.
—Julia Miwa
Julia Miwa :00
Larissa Ranbom :52
André Isaak 1:07
"I respectfully disagree" It's not the responsibility of the people who have the dominant opinion to express themselves, but the responsibility of the people who hold the minority opinion to express themselves.
—Kathryn Lynch
The danger in not allowing a difference of opinion is a forced homogenization.
—Anna Friedman '04
Kathryn Lynch :00
Anna Friedman 1:35
Flick Coleman 1:52
Rules and Roles on Community The standard that I impose on myself when I'm deliberating is the standard of having something that's mine to say.
—Larry Rosenwald
Larry Rosenwald :00
André Isaak :35
Julia Miwa :46
Julie Norem 1:17
Beth DeSombre 2:01
Larry Rosenwald 2:17
Beth DeSombre 2:30
Faculty Perspectives on Posting So during the day there will be this thread that I find really interesting. I'll read it, I'll post on it—and there's not much happening. I check the computer first thing in the morning, and there have been 35 messages on this thread, because students are operating on a different day than I am.
—Beth DeSombre
So if faculty are not posting on a particular issue, they're not being supportive, and that really floored me the first time I read it.
—Julie Norem
Julie Norem :00
Beth DeSombre :36
Julia Miwa 1:17
Beth DeSombre 1:39
Larissa Ranbom 2:42
André Isaak 3:19
Flick Coleman 3:43
Julie Norem 4:01
Community and community Something that is strived for on this campus is the notion of a campus web community.
—André Isaak
André Isaak :00
Audience member :11