Building Blocks revision

Kim Cummings, professor emeritus of the Anthropology/Sociology department of Kalamazoo College, is the lifeblood behind the Kalamazoo Building Blocks program.

The Building Blocks program has existed, in some form or fashion in Kalamazoo, since 1995. Today, it is a fledgling course at Western Michigan University. The program is experiencing difficulties recruiting enough students to participate, but neighborhood residents, as well as the program's financial backers, are passionate about keeping it running.

Building Blocks, officially listed on class registration forms as ANSO 224: Neighborhood Organizing Practicum, began as a class at Kalamazoo College in the spring of 1995. Originally designed as a way for students to develop advanced organizing skills through working on community-based projects, Building Blocks, by its last years at Kalamazoo, functioned as half-theory, half-application intensive life experience. Students, in groups of three, worked specific blocks of houses in neighborhoods in transition in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Given anywhere between $2,500 and $3,000 in grant money – depending on how generous donations, taken from a number of churches and companies local to Kalamazoo, were in any given year – student organizers worked with neighborhood association managers and resident advisors, themselves previous Building Blocks participants, to rally neighborhood residents. The cover story was that residents would be given money to make exterior home improvements – maybe to buy paint, or flowers, or shrubs to pretty the place up; maybe to fix that hole in the porch; maybe to replace the window sills. The catch was that they had to work with their neighbors to actually get the work done. The goal? Building social capital, and creating a network of neighbors that each resident could potentially rely on if the need arose.

When Kim Cummings retired, one of his stipulations for retirement was that he be permitted to continue teaching Building Blocks, as well as his winter course, How to Change the World. The department could not afford to pay Cummings to teach these courses; as a result, he opted to take no salary for How to Change the World, and to take salary for Building Blocks from grant money from the program itself, rather than from the school. According to Cummings, he was promised five years of adjunct teaching, at which point the programs would be re-evaluated.

This lasted for three years. In the spring of 2010, however, Cummings was informed of the Anthropology/Sociology department's decision to eliminate the Building Blocks program. He started seeking out alternatives to hosting the program. The Philosophy department was briefly considered, but, with just two professors, it did not have the resources to support a class of the Building Blocks magnitude.

The source of the final decision to no longer support Building Blocks on Kalamazoo College campus is unclear. Rumors abound: philosophical differences between Cummings and other Anthropology/Sociology professors; fights between Cummings and school Provost Mickey McDonald; and demands on the part of the fledgling Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership to remove the program so they could start their own, similar, courses, are just several of the theories circulating about the issue. Unfortunately, no one involved in deciding to remove the program could be reached for comment.

During the ninth week of Kalamazoo College's ten-week-long spring quarter, several weeks after he was informed of the decision, Kim Cummings sent an email to all past participants of Building Blocks with the subject line, myself included. "Calling all BB/09ers: Sad announcement to make." The contents of the email were brief and to the point: "I'm calling all BB/09s--sophomores, juniors, and seniors--to meet at the end of tonight's BB seminar, 10:00 p.m. in Dewing 310. I have a very sad announcement to make."

I was unable to attend the meeting, but according to other participants who did manage to be there, he revealed to Building Blocks classes past and present that Building Blocks was going to be removed from the curriculum. And then, Building Blocks 2010 participant Allie VanHeest said, "he sat down and we organized. We held discussions with administrators, rallied in Red Square, and led a letter-writing campaign."

There was a lot of heartbreak and, yes, drama surrounding the decision to discontinue offering the class at Kalamazoo. Most people have no idea why the decision was made, and even less idea why it was enforced. The decision sparked a flurry of strong responses. The residents of one of the target blocks of Spring 2010, Lowden Street in Oakwood neighborhood, wrote a group letter to the editor in the Kalamazoo Gazette stating that "We're sadden by the late breaking bulletin from Kalamazoo College Provost… about the possible demise of the Building Blocks Kalamazoo Program. We can only pray that he will reconsider and acknowledge the impact that this stellar program has had…. Let's save Michigan with neighbors helping neighbors." The letter was signed collectively, as a block, rather than by any individual residents, presumably as an effort to showcase one aspect of the program's success.

Students rallied. Petitions circulated campus. People wrote alumni who previously participated, begging them to contact the Provost's office and ask them to reconsider the decision. During those final hot and sunny days of the 2010 spring quarter, students with clipboards set up shop in several high-traffic areas of campus, calling to every student passing by, asking them to sign their petitions. I confess to playing my part by signing the petition and joining the group of students going around telling the story of their Building Blocks experiences to students who had not had the chance to enroll in the course. All of these actions were to no avail.

Student Ben Ensroth remembered the situation differently than any of the protesters. As one of the students on the interim committee for the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership, he had quite a few formal and informal interactions with the Provost and the President's staff. This gave him a unique insight into their reactions to the Building Blocks controversy. "They weren't going to change their minds," he said. "I didn't come down strongly on either side of it. The argument that it didn't really fit in with the curriculum held a lot of water. But still - did I wish they kept such a unique program? At the end of the day, yes, but it doesn't matter. Because it was such a hot button topic – the things I overheard from working with the president's staff and a lot of people from within anthropology/sociology on other things – the decision had been made. They weren't going to keep the program. It was going to get cut. There was really no hope of saving it."

Luckily, hope was not lost for the program. Cummings found his solution at Western Michigan University. The school of social work took Cummings – and the program – in. He recruited several K students, Allie VanHeest and Nicole Allman, to serve as TAs for the first year at Western. According to Cummings, "Western was wonderfully receptive. Don Cooney from the School of Social Work knew about the program well… and was quick to encourage the school of social work to pick it up." A lot of that actually had to do with how students at Kalamazoo were rallying to keep the course. "People at Western were seeing how hard students were fighting for it at K," Cummings said. He sees that as instrumental in Western's decision to pick up the course.

This spring marks the first year that no Kalamazoo students have been involved in Building Blocks since its inception. His current TA is a Western student, Erin Kaplan, and all of his students are also Western students currently attending Western Michigan's summer intensive session.

This transition, beyond Western's quick decision to integrate it into their curriculum, was not easy for Cummings, or for the program. "What's been hard is to get the number of students. I don't have the same connections at Western that I did at K."

He went to 22 different classes across several departments at Western and advertised the Building Blocks course to all the students in each class. "Kalamazoo is really unique," Cummings said. Western is a lot larger, and as such, word of mouth is not the driving force in drawing students to the program that it was at Kalamazoo. Still, many Western students seem to be interested in the program. Unfortunately, according to Cummings "Western students are more likely to be employed, part time or full time, or they have other classes, so they can't spend as much time in the neighborhoods." Because of this, and the fact that Western's summer session is several weeks shorter than an academic quarter at Kalamazoo, he has had to make the course less academically demanding.

Additionally, students have less wiggle room to deal with possible setbacks. "They really have to do everything exactly on time because there's less forgiveness in the schedule," Cummings said. Whereas, while the program was at K, students had several weeks to coax residents of the neighborhoods to participate, at Western, "they just have to do it, and if residents don't sign up at the start, it's really hard to integrate them."

The biggest problem arose with the fact that Western's summer session is not covered by financial aid. Many interested students had to withdraw their applications to participate in the Building Blocks class for financial reasons. As it stands, rather than three students per participating blocks, now only two – and, in one case, one – students are on a team.

The community overall is still grateful to the program. Present Building Blocks TA Erin Kaplan worked in the Fairmont neighborhood when she took the course, and when she was there, largely through the efforts of her block, the Fairmont Neighborhood Association was dissolved and re-formed as the West Douglas Neighborhood Association. Although Kaplan did not speak about the politics involved in the transition, she did reveal a little of the backstory. "Before and during the project, my residents would complain that Fairmont Neighborhood Association was 'shady'… However, I continue to run into residents who say 'I hope you know—your project [Building Blocks] fixed more than the street, but the Association as well.'"

Others agreed about the importance of the program. One resident of Vine neighborhood was overheard saying, "I saw the Building Blocks signs go up the other day. It's always great to see them there."

The Building Blocks board of directors is excited about the program's new home at Western Michigan University. Students are, too – Kaplan said "I think the project is going as well as it could be going." Still, Cummings is keeping his eyes open for other possible opportunities, in case it just doesn't stick there. As for the future – "Who knows?" he said. "If we just can't get enough students, maybe we'll move to resident organizers."

In any event, it seems that – for the time being – even though Building Blocks no longer has a home at Kalamazoo College, it will continue being a community presence for as long as possible.