For students Scott Brummel, Gabriel Morgan and Rene Tricou, the door to their home is always open.
As members of The Common Good, the three are participating in a living experiment that promotes living well and promoting the idea of community in their house on Crim Street.
“Right now its an open house for the community to come and be at peace and feel welcome,” said Brummel, a junior and volunteer coordinator.
The house is open 24 hours a day for anyone to come in, get free food, meditate, sleep or just be listened to, Brummel said.
For the three, just waking up can be interesting.
“You can have a nap and wake up to a small party in the living room or wake up to a new painting on the wall … its awesome, like a series of beautiful mistakes,” said Morgan, a senior.
Morgan describes the house as social freedom for all visitors — being allowed to come in at anytime and do what you want.
This is the third year of the living experiment while the three roommates have only lived in the house since the beginning of the year.
The theory behind the home was to get people living together and see how they could promote the welfare and empower one another, said Bill Thompson, a Lutheran pastor and University adjunct professor, who started The Common Good in 1986 when he came to the city. The group used to be located in the United Christian Fellowship church on Thurstin Avenue before moving to Crim Street three years ago. The church was torn down this summer and turned into a parking lot.
As a pastor, he lived and worked in poor neighborhoods in New York, where he saw the importance of community and people solving problems as a collective.
When he moved to Bowling Green, he focused on raising awareness to college students on how they could help people through volunteer work and service projects.
“We need each other to live well,” Thompson said.
Students face a lot of issues like debt and low job prospects, and The Common good is just another way to find meaning and purpose, he said.
Tricou, a senior, said the group allows people to just come in and relax.
“You don’t have to put on a front, you can just be yourself and apply that to a real world setting,” Tricou said.
Other than providing a free space for students and community members to eat and meditate, the group does volunteer work through the MLK Day of Service and hosting a food drive and pantry, Brummel said.
The next step for the group is to identify branding and become financially stable, Morgan said,
Morgan said this can be accomplished through fundraising and marketing, where the group can sell fair-trade, mass-marketable products like scandals, scarves and coffee that also represents the group.
The students have always been enthusiastic about what they are doing and the plan is for the group to be student run next year, Thompson said, who will be retiring this year.
“The students will do fine. They have a vision and want something that gives them an alternative,” he said. “Its an open sanctuary for the students to get away from the University and just chill.”
For more information about The Common Good and its meeting schedule, visit its website at www.thecommongoodbg.moonfruit.com/.
