Photo Feature: Stephens Unplugged
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Stephens College President Dianne Lynch, on the goal of Vespers:
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Think Eckhardt Tolle meets Virginia Woolfe, informed by the faintest
undertones of Silent Night.
That’s the concept behind “Vespers,” a new campus
program of “intentional silence,” designed to help today’s
digital natives take a break from the constant noise of their wired
lives.
On Dec. 14, 2009, Stephens College students gathered in the campus chapel
to hear brief comments by the college’s new president, Dr. Dianne
Lynch, and then to just sit, to “begin to learn the value of quiet.”
“It’s not about religion or personal faith, it’s about
teaching students that there’s value in being still, in being
unplugged from the digital universe,” says Lynch, whose research
interests focus on the social identity development of children who grow
up using the Internet.
“Most successful women know by experience that ‘me time’
– those moments when we stop, focus and are quiet – are
incredibly valuable in our lives,” Lynch says, lamenting at the
same time that women often learn that lesson the hard way: by figuring
out the cost of not spending time alone.
“Learning to be self-reflective, quiet and focused is as important
a part of becoming a successful, centered and healthy adult as many
of the subjects that are a common part of college curricula,”
she says. “It’s a life skill, and students today –
who live in a world of constant static – need it more than ever
before.”
Today’s college students spend an estimated $6.5 billion a year
on technology, and an average of 12 hours a day engaged with some time
of media; more than nine of those hours are spent with “tech”
gadgets like computers, MP3 players, gaming devices and mobile PDAs.
Virtually all college students have cell phones.
And yet new research shows that college students who regularly use digital
technologies to multitask are not as good at completing multiple projects
as those who concentrate on one thing at a time.
At Stephens, at least for an hour every few weeks, that “one thing”
will be the students themselves.
“It’s a major breakthrough for a young woman to realize
that she, alone, is sufficient,” says Lynch. “So many of
our students have never taken the time to just stop and be.”
That notion of “being in the now” has been popularized by
Tolle, who has built a multimedia empire that includes bestselling books,
Webinars that draw millions of viewers, an online television network,
partnerships with Oprah, and weekend workshops all over the country.
But the idea of “presence” is nothing new. It’s been
a staple of Buddhist thought – commonly referred to as “mindfulness”
– for centuries.
It’s also not new to Stephens.
The original Vespers program started in the 1920s, when students were
required to gather in the campus auditorium on a weekly basis to hear
the comments of a single speaker, and then to sit, quietly, in self-contemplation.
Although current Stephens students are not required to attend Vespers,
which is now known as Stephens Unplugged, Lynch is convinced students
will embrace it, and she predicts that similar programs will emerge
on campuses all over the country.
“As we begin to understand the impacts of the digital age on the
way our children are growing up and becoming socialized, we’ll
have to adjust our notions of what it means to educate young adults,”
she says. “Stephens may be ahead of the curve in recognizing that
digital natives really do have a different set of needs, and that intentional
self-reflection is one of them. But everybody else won’t be far
behind.”
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