To our residents, the Earth House represents a supportive,
empowering, honest, cooperative community that promotes participation
and self-awareness.
To the community, the Earth House is a source of socially and
temporally relevant, informative, engaging acts of public spectacle and
participation. All of our workshops embody our commitment to critical
learning through participatory experience, so house activities combine
multiple medias and numerous points of intersection with the education,
politics, and experience of the student.
In these ways, the Earth House represents the organized
implementation of a liberal arts perspective. A liberal arts education
exists to illuminate, through diversity of ideas and hands-on
experience, the intersections between disciplines and discourses.
Earth House demonstrates the relationships between seemingly
disparate events, consequences, and communities, by providing programs
that focus on environmental concerns or consumer attitudes that effect
numerous and transnational communities. In this way, it helps to locate
Drew University within a matrix of global knowledge, and advances a
holistic understanding of the individual that leads to feelings of
autonomy, responsibility, and opportunity. We propose to fill both
academic and wellness needs for students at Drew.
Our implementation of this agenda occurs through not only the
numerous and varied events that each member of the Earth House hosts,
but also through the participation of Earth House members in numerous
other organizations on campus. Frequent internal consciousness-raising
sessions keep house members motivated and informed.
La Casa Latina
In the efforts to preserve the Latino history and culture, La Casa
Latina aspires to instill the significance of the Latino heritage into
the Drew Community. Its members strive toward broadening the education
of and securing knowledge about the Latino culture and community within
and around Drew University. The ambition of house members is to raise
awareness about issues concerning Latinos through programming, which
serves as a means of strengthening the presence and importance of
diversity at this institution.
La Casa Latina is a place which
allows individuals to explore, experience, and absorb culture through
language, traditions, food, values and music. It is through these
aspects of culture that La Casa Latina represents diversity to its
fullest extent. Along with this exchange of culture, La Casa Latina
provides an environment where education can continue beyond the
classroom. The doors of La Casa lead to a world of knowledge and
growth, for it is more than a place to live and learn - it is a home.
La
Casa Latina is a home to students who are interested in the language
and culture of Latin American people, the situation of Latinos living
in the United States and the countries of Central and South America,
and who are also interested in sharing this information with the rest
of the Drew Community.
Besides its academic importance, La Casa
Latina also provides a social environment for students who may feel
ostracized or discriminated against within the Drew Community. Here,
in La Casa Latina, these students are all able to thrive as individuals
in a community that accepts and supports them. La Casa Latina is a
faimly that provides a support system for house members, as well as,
those students who are having trouble adjusting to the lifestyle of
Drew University.
Spirituality House
Since the Spirituality House began it has been an intimate family of
individuals with different spirituality, philosophical, practical, and
religious backgrounds within the larger Drew Community. We encourage
an open dialogueof these issues in order to enable us to work on
respect, acceptance, and understanding of our own and different views.
As members of Spirituality House we have chosen to intentionally live
together in an interfaith environment in order to foster appreciation
for each other's philoshopical, spiritual, and religious beliefs. We
also maintainthat no level of religiosity is necessary for membership
in the house or for one to have some level of spirituality. As members
of teh House we continue to discuss what defines religion and
spirituality for each of us, and enjoy bringing this discussion and
thought within the student body. We make a special effort to keep our
programs diverse and interesting. In order to accomplish this goal, we
work closely with professors to encourage academic and educational
programs as well as fun, community-building programs. Because we have
high standards for our programs, we enjoy excellent attendance from the
Drew Community.
Though we often tend to see our these as related to us as
individuals, we also make an effort to spread ideas of spiritual
acceptance, awareness, and knowledge through our programs. Our
inspiration is anchored in our collective desire to make the world a
better place through our intentional engagement with the needs of
others. Our commitment to love and acceptance of each other has led to
the creation of an environment where spiritual, philosophical and
religious traditions can be practices and respected. This environment
enriches not only our own experiences, but also that of the Drew
Community as a whole.
Umoja House
Umoja House has been known as a Theme House on Drew University's campus
and through programs we have aimed at emphasizing the Pan-African
culture through various programmed events and co-sponsorships. We
believe in first educating the house members about different
Pan-African culture and then the greater Drew Community. Each house is
an active participant of the Drew University community and has abided
by the Umoja House Covenant of Participation. Umoja House is
constantly reinventing its image to convey more the purpose of this
Theme House to Drew University while pursuing the goal stated in the
mission statement, which is educating and diversifying others on
Pan-African culture.
Womyn's Concerns House
The Womyn's Concerns House was founded in 1989 in conjunction with
the Women's Studies program. We are a community of womyn and men
dedicated to being a womyn-friendly/feminist-positive place on campus,
appreciating the multiplicity of experiences including, but not limited
to, such areas as gender, sexual orientation, rece/ethnicity, and
class. The Houseis an environment committed to promoting awareness
through active discussion and education, as well as by putting theories
into practice. The House is a safe, open space that operates on the
basis of mutual respect and personal growth, for house members and the
Drew Community at large.
The House engenders a framework that we utilize to educate ourselves
and the wider Drew Community on womyn's issues. We sustain the voice
of feminist-positive womyn and men. We are devoted to educating
ourselves and others about feminism, theory, and goals or eradicating
oppression, which are the areas reflected by the Women's Studies
program. Through sponsoring programs at the House itself and
supporting non-House programs pertaining to our goals, we join in the
University's commitment to education.
