I don\u2019t think anything truly meaningful happens for Dayton unless people in the community are intimately involved.<\/p>\n
Now, good things happen in<\/em> Dayton, like the Broadway series at the Schuster Center.\u00a0 Good things also happen to <\/em>Dayton, like being honored as a bike-friendly city by the League of American Bicyclists.\u00a0 But things that are good for<\/em> Dayton only happen when communities get involved.<\/p>\n For example, FilmDayton, a young non-profit organization, geared toward fostering the film industry in the region, recently hosted their second film festival. \u00a0Local short films, Academy Award nominated documentaries, workshops and meet-and-greets were hosted over three days at four locations downtown.\u00a0 The only reason this festival happened is because people who were passionate about making a difference got together and decided to act.<\/p>\n Consider the Five Rivers MetroParks.\u00a0 The parks are open and free to the public.\u00a0 Farms, water play areas, amphitheatres and arboretums are just a few of the features they offer to everyone.\u00a0 Even though they\u2019re levy funded, it\u2019s the 300-plus employees and numerous volunteers\u2014including the Board of Park Commissioners\u2014who really keep the parks going for everyone.<\/p>\n Even city-sponsored initiatives depend on the Dayton community.\u00a0 When Dayton was honored as being bike-friendly, the May 3 press release said the city did two things to promote bicycling: add bike lanes to downtown during street construction and promise to keep biking in mind for future projects.\u00a0 The rest of the credit is given to the MetroParks, the Miami Valley Conservancy District and various volunteer and community associations.<\/p>\n Community leaders can\u2019t do all these things on their own.\u00a0 They need college students to get involved, too.\u00a0 In my experience, college students still have the energy to fight for their ideals.\u00a0 They are visionary, vocal and hopeful, unencumbered by years of experience and potential let-downs.<\/p>\n College students make things happen.\u00a0 Civil rights, feminism, free speech, gay rights, environmentalism, pro-life and pro-choice movements all have roots in movements on college campuses.\u00a0 Sinclair students have expressed their standpoints this year through student clubs and campus events, and I hope they continue to do so.\u00a0 When young idealists get together with experienced leaders, meaningful things happen for the community.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I don\u2019t think anything truly meaningful happens for Dayton unless people in the community are intimately involved. Now, good things happen in Dayton, like the Broadway series at the Schuster Center.\u00a0 Good things also happen to Dayton, like being honored as a bike-friendly city by the League of American Bicyclists.\u00a0 But things that are good […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[217,278,1976,1232],"class_list":["post-5076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tartan-news","tag-community","tag-dayton","tag-meagan-ewton","tag-movement"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-1jS","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5076"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5078,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5076\/revisions\/5078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}