AROUND THE PARK
Activities like kayaking and snorkeling at La Jolla Shores help freshmen residents of the Honors Living-Learning Community bond with like-minded schoolmates.
[mutuality]
LIVE AND LEARN
MARK CEDAR
Freshmen choose a new spin when it comes to on-campus residency
by Trisha J. Ratledge n the spare space of La Jolla Playhouse’s Shank Theatre, impassioned dancers turn back time, bringing the audience with them to the Dominican Republic and the heart-wrenching murder of three sisters who participated in the country’s 1960 resistance movement. For the USD freshmen
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U SD M A G A Z IN E
that fill the theater, this trip to see “Las Mariposas” is much more than a cultural excursion. It marks the beginning of a year in which their passion for social justice and their first-year experience at USD mesh into an invigorating mélange of inquiry and intellectual awakening. The students are all residents of
USD’s Social Justice Living-Learning Community (LLC), one of three LLCs offered during the 2011-2012 academic year. Putting a new spin on the tradition of freshman residential living, themed communities such as sustainability, social justice and honors connect academics to residential life.
For many students at “Las Mariposas,” a new understanding dawned about the universal struggle for justice, beginning with a faculty-led conversation on the bus ride back to school, and continuing among the students themselves back at the residence hall. “I had never heard anything