Changes in Connections and the Campus | Kazunori Takashio, Assistant to the Dean, Graduate School of Media and Governance
2021.11.30
I don't recall exactly how many years ago it was, but there was a time when "the Takashio-doesn't-actually-exist theory" was circulating on social media as if it were true.
Shortly after Twitter started to become popular, I also jumped on the bandwagon. From the very beginning, I have consistently used my real name for my account. I don't have any sub-accounts. Looking back, it was from around that time that I started connecting with students outside of my research group. The number of students I connected with via social media grew day by day. They weren't taking my lectures, and their majors were completely different. We had never met in person to talk anywhere on campus. The same was true for them. Even though we interacted online, most of them had, in fact, never seen my face. Naturally, "the Takashio-doesn't-actually-exist theory" was born. Another name for it was "the Takashio-is-a-bot theory."
Then, at ORF one year, one of my followers found my research group in the program and came to speak to me at our booth. The exclamation "He's real!" instantly spread through the hall in Midtown, and people came one after another to take pictures. It was our first time meeting, but it didn't feel like it. From online to real life. I couldn't stop the thrill of being right in the middle of this change in connections. I was also invited to a share house managed by students. We talked about all sorts of things over a meal. They even held a farewell party for me when I was going to study abroad in Germany. The bundle of message leaves I received then is still one of my treasures today. There was a definite connection with students, unbound by credits or majors. Those casual connections that began online continue to this day.
Ten years have passed since then, and this fall was a busy one. As the Executive Committee Chair for ORF2021 and the person in charge of running the Camp for Designing the Future, the peak periods for these two tasks arrived at almost the same time. Both were held online, just like last year. When I think about it, we have been in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic for over a year and a half. In fact, during this time, there was something I had been constantly thinking about.
"What exactly is a campus?"
Faculty and staff, students, high school students, and alumni would each have their own way of perceiving this question. Redefining the "campus," which can be called the origin of our activities, is also the theme for this year's Camp for Designing the Future , and ORF .
With the start of the fall semester, the situation improved slightly, and students returned to campus. I have the sense that we are gradually returning to the SFC of the past. This time, it's from real life to online, and back to real life again. Meanwhile, over the past year and a half, the shift toward a multi-platform (or cross-platform) campus has rapidly accelerated at SFC. While faculty members were struggling with how to maintain their research and educational activities, the students quickly built a virtual campus. Starting with the modeling of the Theta Building, virtual campuses began to emerge one after another on various platforms. They managed to hold the Tanabata Festival and various other campus events across diverse platforms, events that could easily have been canceled. The students' impressive efforts caught the eye of NHK and were broadcast as a short documentary program in the summer of 2020. Many of you may have seen it. Now, even the mid-term presentations for the master's program in the graduate school are held more interactively than ever before within Gather.Town. Many faculty members and students have also set up satellite labs (uchi-labo) in their homes.
A little over a year has passed since then. This year's Camp for Designing the Future was also held online. On the day of the event, hoping to give the high school students a sense of the campus atmosphere, I positioned myself on the rooftop of the lounge from early morning and conducted the orientation with the sunlit Gulliver Pond (Kamoike) in the background. At first, everyone apparently thought it was just a typical virtual background. Then, people started to realize, "It's real!" from the sound of ducks quacking that my microphone picked up. I couldn't help but grin.
This year marks the 11th year of the Camp for Designing the Future. I have written about my thoughts on the Camp for Designing the Future in a contribution to the SFC 30th Anniversary website, which I encourage you to read . At last year's Camp for Designing the Future, the first to be held online, there was a certain awkwardness between us, the organizers, and the participating high school students. But look at this year. That awkwardness was completely gone. The workshops proceeded through the screen as if this were the new normal (though I wouldn't go that far). The current students helping out were also very adept. At that Camp for Designing the Future, an incident occurred that gave me a glimpse into the very "nature" of the campus of the future.
The diplomatic policy simulation workshop, which started this year. It's a workshop newly planned by Professor Tsuruoka and Professor Jimbo of the Faculty of Policy Management. Participants take on the roles of policymakers from various countries and regions, such as Japan, the United States, China, and European nations, and simulate policies for contemporary international issues with their teammates. One afternoon, as the workshop was reaching its climax, I visited the workshop's online room, as if making my rounds. There were no high school students there. Only Professor Tsuruoka and Professor Jimbo were there, waiting somewhat forlornly. When I asked, they explained, "Right now, each country and region is engaged in highly confidential discussions, so they aren't coming out of their respective rooms." It made perfect sense. Online is more convenient for simulating real-world time differences and physical distances. The usual method of "splitting up into the four corners of a classroom" would, conversely, lack realism.
I myself do not have a clear answer to the question I posed earlier. Perhaps the campus is a logical entity, one that changes its form according to purpose and circumstances, and we engage with it in its various locations. Dean Kato said in his message for ORF, "Only third-year undergraduates and above, and we faculty and staff, hold a fixed image of the campus. The very act of thinking about whether we can or cannot return to the legacy campus might be a failing. We will create a new campus." I want to shoulder that task together with them.
P.S. Still, writing prose longer than 140 characters is hard.