On Monday, I went to a city council meeting. How many of you know about Muncie City Council? Of course, you assume that Muncie has a city council. How many have even been to one? I'd actually be willing to bet that less than 10 Ball State students have been to Muncie city council meetings in the last five years. As college students, we're simply not civically engaged.
The malaise extends a little further than that. We're not just civically disengaged; we're not engaged with the community. Muncie, as we students like to point out to each other, is boring as hell. There's the Village, with all of two blocks along University Avenue; downtown, with Civic Theatre and maybe Cornerstone Center for the Arts; and the McGalliard Road strip, culminating in the Mall and Showplace 12. Quite the paragon of arts, culture and entertainment.
I've heard it said - I don't know how true this is - that Ball State is a commuter school: students pack up and go home for the weekend. My experience riding the Green Loop on Friday afternoons confirms this, but that's an entirely different gripe and column. Students don't stay in Muncie, so Muncie has nothing to convince students to stay. Ah, we begin to see the vicious cycle. Since students don't hang around Muncie, Muncie has no reason to appeal to them. And so on.
Does it have to be like this? Last weekend, I was in Bloomington. Do you know what the Indiana University village is like? Have you been there? It's 10 city blocks chock full of entertainment, stores and restaurants serving IU's students. I even heard rumors that Ball State students drive to Bloomington on the weekends for the culture. I don't know how true that is.
Clearly, then, the sad state of Ball State students' lack of engagement in the community is not some inevitable outcome of the university. It's instead the product of the feedback loop I outlined above. How can we break it and get ourselves involved in Muncie? After all, the student body at the university is a slumbering economic giant. While poor, when we're here we increase Muncie's population by a good 30 percent.
It's easy: create opportunities for ourselves. The student body is a huge market to tap - both of unskilled labor and of consumption - and there have to be entrepreneurs among us willing to spend the capital to open businesses near campus catering to students. What if students turned out en masse to get the council to rezone part of the neighborhood by Johnson and LaFollette complexes and entrepreneurs opened restaurants and bars there? What if part of the seedy off-campus housing east of campus, near North Hall, Noyer Complex, Park Hall and Studebaker Complex, was rezoned for commerce and enterprising students opened up some shops there through the School of Business?
Could such businesses induce students to stay on campus? Could Ball State's engagement in Muncie grow to rival IU's? Surely, if they can do it, we can do it too. All we need is people willing and able to jump in and take the chance. The risks are certainly high, but think of the potential rewards.
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