The term “collective effervescence” was coined by sociologist Émile Durkheim in his 1912 book Elementary Forms of Religious Life. It is the unity formed when people are engaged in a shared purpose. It is the sensation when individuality comes second to collectivity. It is the feeling of dancing at a concert while surrounded by others in movement, the comfort of community when in sorrow, the passion in presidential election rallies or the act of peering up at a centennial solar eclipse with the rest of the world.
The university setting offers unique potential for collective effervescence. Unlike how the vast majority of people live across the globe, college campuses — especially those with a high percentage of students living on campus — are intentional collective communities. In a nation with growing rates of loneliness, where young people increasingly retreat to their phones, the walls of individuality are broken down in a collegiate environment, where students eat, sleep and study beside a sizable population of their peers and closest friends. Now that we have finally returned to campus after Dec. 13, we must take advantage of the opportunity we have to forge collective effervescence and light a path forward.
On Saturday, Feb. 7, the University hosted a memorial service for Ella Cook ’28 and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov ’29, the two students killed in the Dec. 13 shooting. Held in Sayles Hall, the ceremony was available online and broadcast at locations across campus. As the wintry wind whipped outside, I sat at the service, watching as students listened, breathed, prayed and turned on dozens of electric tea candles as one. After the memorial’s conclusion, the sounds of the Hutchings-Votey pipe organ rang through the room as students quietly exited. Once outside, we slowly dispersed, identical white flowers in hand, as the University Hall bell chimed in the background. Across campus and around the world, Brown community members were ephemerally united in mourning.
This opportunity for students to grieve together was long delayed. Immediately after the shooting, students departed campus, leaving each other and our shared home for over a month. While some regional gatherings took place for students to come together, university-wide grieving was inhibited by our distance. Students recognized that this abrupt halt delayed an avenue of communal healing. By gathering together on Saturday, the Brown community experienced “faith inspired by magic,” as Durkheim writes, not only through the poignant collection of religious texts and prayers uttered, but also through the higher power and purpose caused by the sensation of collective effervescence.
Collective gathering is central to the grieving process. Rituals that have existed for millennia across a wide variety of cultures and religions incorporate community involvement as a tenet of their practice. Communal mourning establishes shared values and maintains support. It is a catalyst for empathy and resilience. Brown can harness its power.
Life at Brown is a nursery of collective effervescence. Students revel together in the abundant snow, building dozens of snowmen and shrieking while rushing down hills on sleds. Study groups cram together at all hours in the many university libraries. Crowds roar in unison at rivalry football games. It pervades every avenue of the day-to-day. The magic of the college experience comes from the communal.
As we face the rest of the spring semester and learn to live after devastation, we must foster collective effervescence as an integral aspect of our healing journey. We must welcome it through the joy of the packed Main Green on the first day of spring, the sorrow of continued university-wide remembrance and in all of the moments and emotions between.
Let us continue to convene in shared remembrance and action. This can be done through establishing recurring dates of assembly or collaborative projects of change and renewal. Collective effervescence can, and should, be fostered on Brown’s campus. It has power — the sacredness of our healing and humanness stems from it.
Talia Berkwits ’29 can be reached at talia_berkwits@brown.edu. Please send responses to this op-ed to letters@browndailyherald.com and other opinions to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
Talia Berkwits is a staff columnist. She is from Chicago, IL and undecided on her concentration. She loves cooking (but not cleaning up) and one of her goals is to visit all 50 states.
