You‘d think that ‘hospitality’, at first thought, belongs in the realm of travel or even in a philosophical or religious discussion. Certainly it is one of the moral imperatives that you give shelter and comfort to those in need. We are taught to welcome strangers. Hotel chains and the tourist industry take it as a standard of monetary necessity. Schools are learning, if they have not already learned, the hard lessons of being places of welcome.

It might not be odd then to think of hospitality in the context of education. We find ourselves, in many ways, like the travel business.

Hospitality is important because schools are constantly visiting and being visited in one way or another. Their sports teams visit other schools and their bands march on each others’ fields -or in Disney World if they are lucky. We look at the smiling faces of their graduates and we judge their kids by their behavior in their varsity jackets.

When you visit another school you are their guest. You are in their house. High school athletes probably know this feeling better than anyone. Every school has an attitude. Some are good. Some are welcoming. Some are a little aloof or worse.

If we are welcomed we can easily feel it, like you can feel a genuine smile. If we are given a place to sit and a comfortable, welcoming environment we feel it deeply. It touches that religious part of us.

At a recent basketball game, at another school, I saw a section of bleachers yellow taped off for the home team’s own use. It was a crowded event of great rivalry and bleacher real estate was at a premium.  That is, of course, all well and fine. School functions are community functions. The home team need their fans to sit behind them. Some Fennville fans had unknowingly wandered into the section and sat down. They had not seen some other Fennville fans before them asked to move. They were quickly approached by a volunteer and asked to move. A discussion followed, which did not look overly friendly, but in the end they relented and all moved. You are always at a disadvantage on foreign soil. I saw several sets of Fennville fans asked to leave that section of bleachers.

In the end the reserved section mostly filled up. The game went on and we left the gym and basketball game to victorious memories, but I saw school hospitality differently after that. In my opinion it had been a breach of hospitality.

 Hospitality is passive and kind. If hospitality is religious in nature one’s own seat would be offered to the stranger, like offering the naked one’s own clothes or shoes. If one’s hospitality is philosophical in nature, one would offer to share the seats. If the hospitality were commercial in nature, a deal would have been struck and money exchanged, but none of this happened. We were guests, but we were denied the hospitality due us.

It might be a sign of the times. We are sensitive of our ‘borders’, of what is ours and what is theirs. Sports, by nature, enforces this. But maybe we have become too sensitized to the dangers of strangers. Maybe we need to re-enforce our sense of hospitality, teach it in the same sense and way we teach sportsmanship. In a world gone crazy with ownership, perhaps we need to own our own humanity and offer it to others. Maybe that’s the best definition of ‘hospitality’, a sharing of one’s humanity.