New York Times uses Dacie Moses story for Student Opinion question prompt
The prompt asks, “Where Do You Gather and Find Community Outside of School?”
The New York Times used its story about Carleton’s Dacie Moses House for a Student Opinion question prompt, “Where Do You Gather and Find Community Outside of School?”
Do you have a place where you go to gather with others and find community?
Maybe it’s the local coffee shop you stop at before school, or a studio where you get to be creative alongside other artists. It could also be the gym or field where you practice a sport with teammates, a friend’s house that is the go-to hangout spot or your place of worship or spirituality.
What is so special about this place? What do you gain from being there? Is it fun? Nourishing? Relaxing? Do you ever leave that place feeling more connected to yourself, others or the larger world?
In “Other Colleges Have Frat Houses. This One Has a Cookie House,” Ron Lieber writes about a community space that Carleton College in Minnesota has offered its students for decades.
Students, read the entire article and then tell us:
- What are your thoughts on the cookie house? What, to you, is unique or memorable about it and its founder, Candace Kelley Moses?
- What place in your life is most like the cookie house? Is it somewhere you and your friends go together? Or is it somewhere you go to meet new people, or just be around others while you read, study, exercise or make art?
- Why do you think Carleton College offers the cookie house to its students? Would you visit the house if you were a student there? And if you’re thinking about going to college, how much would having a space on campus like the cookie house motivate you to apply somewhere?
- Holly Kelchner, who supervises the cookie house and is training to be a minister, said in the article, “Radical hospitality is ministry to its core.” What do you think she means? How do you think the cookie house is an example of that? Have you ever experienced “radical hospitality,” or offered it to someone else? If so, what kind of impact did that have on you?