Sebastian White :: Show Off Flower City Glories to New Arrivals

OPINION

Show off Flower City Glories to New Arrivals

Rochester Democrat & Chronicle | September 12, 2004
By Sebastian White

The evolution of the ROC City Coalition, a group of young Rochester residents hoping to parlay their energy into action and impress their forward-thinking ideas into the consciousness of area leaders, bodes well for a region hard hit by an exodus of talented and well-educated young people.

A little more than a year ago, I was one of the many twenty-somethings who bid a misty-eyed adieu to Rochester in the final days leading to my college graduation. I was an outsider, a Mainer who arrived in 1999 for college and ended up accidentally—and quite unexpectedly—falling in love with Rochester. When it came time for graduation, I didn’t want to leave, and was fed up with those who had overlooked or were unappreciative of the nuances of this spectacular city and weren’t sad to make their exit.

Slouched in a sleek leather banquette of a fashionable Park Avenue cafe, I castigated my peers for being uninterested in the region, for exploring little more than Rochester's bars and nightclubs during their educational sojourn in the area. I criticized my friends for not poking around the eerily fascinating mausoleums of Mt. Hope Cemetery and for not pausing to read the preservation plaques that dot the impressive stone and brick manses of East Avenue.

When, like most of my friends, I couldn't find a job in Rochester, I left for greener (or at least less snowy) pastures and ended up in Boston, where I work as a university marketing consultant representing many institutions in the Rochester area.

My work involves figuring out what makes students truly passionate about their college experience and what makes them stick around.

One of the pivotal parts of the equation is location, and admittedly, Rochester is a tough sell. It’s not easy to convince footloose and fancy-free 18-year-olds to move to a place better known for its snow than for its nightlife and urban vibrancy, especially when there are so many better-known and more outwardly enticing college towns out there.

For me, Rochester’s pull has always been both aesthetic and emotional. Although I look back fondly on my years in the area— lazy afternoons spent reading underneath the spectacular lilacs at Highland Park, twilight walks around the East End, evenings at my favorite sidewalk cafe —I can’t put my finger on exactly why I’m so enamored of the place. Rochester leaves me searching for appropriate descriptors, and that’s not a good thing when one of my job functions is to be head cheerleader for some of its colleges. I wish I could just tell people, “Trust me, you’ll love it.”

It’s going to take a lot to reverse Rochester’s dubious distinction of being one of the nation’s brain drain epicenters, but to regional leaders and organizations like the ROC City Coalition, I want to say, “This is your chance to shift the trend.”

A slew of eager college freshmen are now upon the region. They’re a clean slate, a chance to change perceptions and invigorate Rochester with the young, well-educated, and idealistic people it sorely needs.

Show them now why they should love and stay in Rochester. Share with them your passion for the place, its complex history of prominence and decline, and the hope of a promising future. Speak of Rochester in the enlightening superlatives it merits.

If those of us in a position to do so ignore our obligation to enlighten and inform, then young people will surely cast off this unique city when it comes time for taking a job and building a life for themselves. That would be everyone’s loss.