Friendship Circle
Photo by Eliza Welling
Go on any pathway in the Dell of Lynchburg College and you
will end up here. It is a circle, a meeting place, a place for studying,
and a place for socializing. Students walk through it every day to get to one
building from another. It is not just any circle, though; it is the the
Friendship Circle, a place where new friends meet and old friends unite.
This gathering place is at the heart of campus, "so-named to commemorate the
founding of the first Virginia chapter of the National Conference of Christians
and Jews on the Lynchburg College campus in 1935" (www.lynchburg.edu).
It is also where the leadership inductions take place each year.
Friendship Circle is a starting point for students; whenever you are lost just follow a pathway and re-start yourself to find your way again. Each building has a pathway leading up to it, and each one of these six pathways begins at the Friendship Circle. The pathways also have a metaphorical meaning; they show how all people are different, from different places and different ethnicities, but we all come together at Lynchburg College where we have become one. The benches are important because they allow students and faculty to relax and to talk to one another. They are in the shapes of hearts because they portray how we are one and that we should love in life. Thus they are in the center of the circle which portrays life and togetherness.
--Eliza Welling