A Message from One of Meetum’s Founders
Conor Brown ‘16
Like most students on campus, Amherst Uprising had a profound effect on me. My peers’ feelings of extreme betrayal, suffering, pain, anger, and loneliness shook me to the core. Amherst Uprising brought a new level of awareness to everyone who participated. Hearing my peers tell real stories about their lives opened my eyes to the adversity they face on a daily basis. After processing these events, I turned to my close friend and teammate Louie Reed. Together, we spent hours somberly discussing everything from the events sweeping our campus and country to his personal experiences as a black male. We asked ourselves, why do we seem to have so much diversity at Amherst, yet fail to truly be diverse? As well, how is it possible that students of all backgrounds feel so lonely, isolated and excluded in an environment and culture that is supposedly open and welcoming?
Exhausting these topics, our discussion turned to solutions and what we could do to help. True change needs to come from students. Creating an environment and culture that genuinely relishes our diverse student body and includes everyone will inevitably fail if students do not commit to making it a reality. Too often, we embrace the comfort of our own personal bubbles, hanging out with the same friends and following the same daily routines. I am as guilty of this as the next student. However, there is something wrong with this. On our campus, there exists an incredible diversity of people with equally diverse experiences. Think about all the potential opportunities, experiences, and friendships you will miss out on if you don’t push your boundaries and step outside of your comfort zone. You risk missing the opportunity to enrich your peers and yourself by failing to forge these friendships.
When thinking about the obstacles preventing this open and inclusive culture from emerging at Amherst, it is pretty clear that students are willing to meet new people and build new friendships. After the sit-in and the Uprising, students listened to their peers and clamored to help in any way they could. Students’ efforts to improve the culture at Amherst were not limited by lack of effort; they were limited by lack of time. Amherst College students have the unfortunate blessing of having more work and commitments than we have time in the day to tackle. Given an easier way to meet new students with lower time commitments, Louie and I believed students would continue the momentum created during the sit-in to create the culture we all want and deserve. After speaking with my first year roommate, Patrick DeVivo, (who I probably would not have met if we were not roommates) we created the idea for Meetum.
For those who have not heard, Meetum is a social networking app aiming to catalyze cultural change at Amherst College by bringing students together. For those who have, I am truly sorry for shamelessly pushing the app and bombarding you with messages. I solemnly promise you will only hear it a few hundred more times! Meetum is a platform where students can post all types of events ranging from pick-up basketball and Mario Kart to studying in the library and attending an Amherst Symphony Orchestra concert. All events are posted with the intent of meeting new students. By inviting the entire Amherst College community of students to attend events you also plan on attending, the requisite time spent trying to meet new people can be drastically decreased. We believe Meetum allows students to take ownership of their experience and create the culture Amherst students have demonstrated they desperately want.
Today, Meetum has over 700 Amherst users and over 100 total events created. However, we all still have work to do and Meetum cannot be a success until every Amherst student is willing to put themselves in the position to meet new people and change campus culture for the better. We have the power to successfully change our culture and it is my sincere hope that our time at Amherst will not be defined by our GPAs, our championships, or other accolades, but by the friendships and late night Dominos pizza pies we share together. Will Meetum solve all of our problems here at Amherst and create the change we want overnight? No, probably not, but it is a start.
Conor Brown is part of the Meetum Team and a member of the Amherst College student body.
For iPhone users go to http://download.meetum.io/ and click the icon to direct you to the app store.
For all other users go to http://meetum.io.