Many organizations claim to be a “family” or a “community.” A community comes together around shared values and beliefs. A community supports its members and helps them to fulfill their God-given potential. In society, individuals may be different, but they are not alone; nobody is overlooked, nobody gets lost. Members of communities care about each other.

Because of their size, it’s hard for colleges and universities to be caring communities. That’s why PacRim is intentionally small. 

The size of the group is a significant factor in achieving a caring community. How big can a society be and still be a loving community? Estimates vary but are usually between 150 and 300 people. Yes, you can recognize the names and faces of more than three hundred people, but can you know, interact with, and care about more than three hundred people regularly? Probably not.

I have studied at several universities, including Harvard, Oxford, Waseda, the University of Hawaii, and the University of Southern California. They all had big campuses and good people but were too big to be caring communities. Today, Harvard University has 20,000 students; Oxford University in England has 23,000; Waseda University in Tokyo has 51,000; the University of Southern California has 43,000; and the University of Hawaii at Manoa has 19,000.  

Of course, I made friends at each university and am blessed to still be in touch with some of those friends. I also appreciated the attempts made by several universities to create small communities within their large campuses.

For example, in my graduate program at USC, I was in a cohort group, and we formed a small informal community of a dozen students. Oxford and Harvard have done their best to support smaller communities through their colleges and residential “houses.” Oxford University consists of 38 small colleges. I attended Oriel College today with 300 undergraduates and 200 postgraduate students. The “houses” at Harvard were based on Oxford colleges. When I was at Harvard, I lived at Eliot House, which was designed for 294 students and today has 454 students. Living together and eating together is a good start, but the sense of community is still weak when classes and most activities are university-wide.

Overall, these universities were too big, and the students were too competitive to be the kind of caring community we have here at PacRim.

Listen to them all in one place:  click here for the Presidential Podcast on iTunes.