USD Magazine Summer 2012

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.

[ m u t u a l i t y ]

LIVE AND LEARN Freshmen choose a new spin when it comes to on-campus residency

MARK CEDAR

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 by Trisha J. Ratledge I

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-Learn- ing Community (LLC), one of three LLCs offered during the 2011-2012 academic year. Putting a new spin on the tradition of freshman resi- dential living, themed communi- ties such as sustainability, social justice and honors connect aca- demics to residential life.

For many students at “Las Mariposas,” a new understanding dawned about the universal strug- gle for justice, beginning with a faculty-led conversation on the bus ride back to school, and con- tinuing among the students them- selves back at the residence hall. “I had never heard anything

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USD MAGAZINE