For a good number of the Campo population, the respective towns of Moraga, Lafayette, Walnut Creek are the most familiar places to us. We hold tight to our school spirit, head to the Art and Wine Festival with friends, and happily participate in the trends that come and go. This is a community to be proud of, to hold onto, and to come from.
The solidity of that community is one that, as older students, the Campo community recognizes more often. Sophomore Jamie Lindsay-Renton, whose family has lived here for around nine years, had her own definition of the Bay Area: “We have so many cultures here and we’re able to celebrate them really well. But because we have our own set of views and we’re mostly on the same page about them, I think we’ve become our own community.”
It’s a certain type of culture that defines our respective towns, and the larger community that it lies in. We’re competitive: our sports teams are consistently ranked in the North Coast Section, and students push themselves to the limit with AP classes and nonprofits. We’re diverse: the Bay Area’s long-standing multicultural foundation stems from a history of immigration, and both the proximity and promise of elite schools in the region compel newcomers. We’re drawn to imagination: every weekend, people excitedly flock to a variety of concerts, and numerous writers and artists draw inspiration from the community to create in local contests.
So, is it that easy to leave? If you do, won’t you just be drawn back to the “bubble” that the Bay Area represents? Is it all so much – the competitive atmosphere, the breadth of opportunities presented to us right where we are at home – that we’re more easily blinded to everything else outside of our tight-knit community? “Living here gives me a better sense of community,” stated freshman Kyden Bronson when asked about this issue. “But I’d always like to explore other places to see what else is out there.”
Yet, how else can we see what’s out there if our “culture” is so hyper-local? Yes, we’re experts on the
specific events of our region, but this intense focus can breed a strange kind of ignorance. While we celebrate our local sports teams and traditions, when is there time to engage just as deeply with things from outside the Bay Area? The bubble that we live in provides constant stimulation, but it’s also a closed loop of Bay Area trendsetting. It’s hard to resist the attraction of contributing to that lifestyle, and with that, you don’t feel the need to go anywhere else.
“A lot of things are so normalized, things that I haven’t seen in other places,” senior Avery Yasukochi said. “There have been a lot of times, politically, where you assume everyone believes in the same things and that’s the norm because we all live in the same area, so that’s how we kind of ‘stay’ in the bubble.”
At the end of the day, we have two choices. Number one: wait in the bubble. Keep competing, keep rallying to the culture of the Bay Area, and become a civically engaged, well-informed citizen under the familiarity of what we’ve always known. Or, number two: pop the bubble, step out of that facade of “isolation,” and explore the choices that can be made in other places.
