Imagine spending four years at school coming to class, doing all the work and it’s finally time to graduate. But when you walk the stage at graduation, you barely recognize any of the faces in the graduating class. For many St. Thomas University graduating students, this will be a reality and the late start to grad class events is not helping.
On Feb. 1, the grad class committee held its first grad class social event of the school year: Barbie Movie Night. While having an event is better than no event at all, some graduating students felt disappointed with the overall lack of activities and connection in the class of 2024.
“It’s kind of crappy because pretty much everyone in university had to deal with COVID-19 in some capacity, and where our grad class was dealing with it in Grade 12, we missed out on a lot of those events. And now we’re missing out on these ones,” said Lauren Hayes, fourth-year student and current At-Large Representative on the Student Union.
The grad class committee, which did not even have a president until after by-fall elections in November of 2023, is typically chosen near the start of the year. Hayes said the STUSU general election was held a month later than usual, which set back the focus on grad class, and in turn took away a semester of possible grad events.
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Hayes considers herself quite involved on campus, being a part of both STUSU and the musical theatre program. However, even she does not know many of the peers in her class.
“I think there is an issue. We haven’t been able to connect with each other, so why do we want to have events together? Like obviously everyone wants the grad events, but it’s like, I don’t know half of these people anyway,” she said.
For Hayes, COVID-19 played a big part in the pitfalls of the class of 2024. Many students in the class graduated high school in 2020, which was the peak of the pandemic. High school highlights such as prom, graduation or even basic social interaction were taken away for a lot of grads.
This sentiment is shared by fellow fourth-year Ryley Horton, who recognized many found it hard to make friends in first year due to online learning, although she was lucky to have found connections with fellow grads through sports and her classes later on.
“We did our best with what we could but obviously it was kind of hard because we weren’t on campus,” she said. “I think that having our first year be on campus without COVID would have been more impactful for a lot of other people.”
While she feels there is a lack of grad class activities, she is not upset about it, just disappointed.
“That’s just the way life goes I guess. I’m not too upset but I wish there would be a little bit more.”
The lingering impact of COVID-19 is evidently still being felt, especially by the graduating class. Drake Ferris, a graduating student who attended STU both before and after the pandemic, said the difference in campus life is very obvious since his return last year.
“I definitely felt a lack of community and a lack of inclusivity for all people. Especially being a grad this year, it just feels like we are very disconnected from each other, which is sad,” he said.
Pre-COVID-19, Ferris felt STU’s campus was lively, with events hosted nearly every day. Unfortunately, this is no longer the case.
“This James Dunn Hall was never quiet. There was never an empty table ever. You’d have to show up at 8 a.m. when the doors opened to get a table in here throughout the day,” he said.
Ferris noted COVID-19’s effect in killing many clubs and societies, many of which have yet to make a return.
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“That has shut a lot of people out,” he said regarding the lack of club events. “Just knowing that there are events coming up really helps people get involved in the community.”
This disengagement and alienation has bled into the grad class involvement as well, and Ferris said the best way to regain the pre-COVID-19 connection is to “start small.”
“Any event, people will come out for it if you advertise it well. The one thing I think of when I think of the Barbie Movie Night is that it wasn’t well advertised.”
“I would just like to see an attempt at any events,” he said. “Anything just to show that they do care about the grads, because four years is a long time to get a degree somewhere and not really have any memorable moments for a graduating class.”
