For most students at Cornell, it’s only too easy to stay within the confines of Cornell’s campus. We have everything we need here (especially those of us living on-campus), and the Cornell community hosts so many events that you could fill your schedule without setting foot off of the Arts Quad. The bubble on the Hill is comfortable, and the slope down to the town is formidable—but last Saturday, a small group of Rose Scholars braved the downhill journey to mingle with community members at the Farmer’s Market.

Before we left, our guides told us that a full 30% of Farmer’s Market visitors are tourists passing through Ithaca. But if you think about it, Ithaca’s population is about 30,000; between Cornell and Ithaca College, the population swells to about 60,000 during the semester. That means that while Cornell and IC are in session, 50% of people within Ithaca city limits are not, strictly speaking, Ithacans. Compare that to the proportion of locals that frequent the Farmer’s Market (70%)—except that here we’re talking about half of an entire town that is essentially “passing through” the Ithaca Community.

So are we just “passing through” Ithaca during our 4 years here? It would seem that the purpose of a university, though primarily centered around education of its students, is also to give back to the community. If we are training our students to become productive members of the worldwide community, it only makes sense to reach out into the immediate community, too. Cornell has lots of opportunities to engage with the Ithaca community such as Into the Streets, service learning and community service projects and programs, and outreach of individual clubs (the Chorus and Glee Club, for example, do workshops with the local high school choirs). But engaging with the community can also be as simple as stepping off of the Hill and getting some fresh veggies from the lakeside. It’s a start, anyhow.

Fellow Rose Scholar Kimaya and I