I once had a dream. Well, I had many.
I was a commuting student, trying to find my place at a sprawling university where I knew nobody. In those dark days, I would find myself sitting on a packed train twice a day amongst burnt-out middle managers, with lots of time to think.
Shouldn’t I be able to go online, post a random thought, get it reviewed by peers in computer science, learn about its possible environmental impact from a prof in the Engineering faculty, only to be told by a grizzled Rotman alumnus that the idea could never make any money?
Wasn’t this the promise of the Internet?
Nobody would dispute that U of T has an acute case of lethargy. Our commuting culture and lack of student space make it hard to meet people, and in surveys measuring campus community involvement, we consistently rank near the bottom. What people disagree about is how to use the Internet as a solution.
In university, almost anywhere you go, March is election season. Amid promises of lowering fees and solutions to global warming, this year’s U of T Student Union campaigns tackled how online tools can be used to increase the sense of community on campus.
“What we’re about is promoting community,” said Jason Marin who unsuccessfully run against the “Demand Access” incumbent UTSU slate. For Marin, an effective student union website is vital, and he had plans for bulking it up with relevant information and community features.
The incumbents didn’t disagree. Sandy Hudson, who just won a second term as UTSU president, plans to make the site a big focus of next year’s efforts. Among her plans: creating U of T versions of Wikipedia and Craigslist. She argues that they will let students “find out more about what’s going on and know a little more about the community.”
The university administration is also forging ahead with its own solutions.
The recently created Ulife portal aims to connect students with events and groups that are active on campus. Part of the initiative is a new blog called UpbeaT. Its mission is to inspire undergraduates to “put down their textbooks now, and then and explore the wider world of U of T’s St. George Campus.”
But it’s sometimes hard to get students to come out of their shells.
“People seem to be reading it, but no one wants to comment!” contributing blogger Liesl* admits.
While blogs have had a big impact on many other communities, it remains to be seen whether they can make a difference in connecting the student body at U of T. Facebook, by comparison, is the juggernaut that can’t be ignored.
Jeffrey Pinto-Lobo is an executive on the Cinema Studies Student Union, a group you might know from the ubiquitous “Free Films on Campus” events. “Facebook has had a huge impact on the CINSSU community,” he argues. With under $100 spent on actual advertising and heavy promotion on Facebook, the attendance at the group’s events has at least doubled. Pinto-Lobo is especially proud of the number of students from outside the Cinema Studies program who have been attending.
Facebook has also impacted residence communities. “You definitely had to take initiative to visit other houses or go drop by events. For those people who aren’t naturally social and outgoing, this can be a bit difficult,” Bianca Filoteo, a recent University College graduate tells me.
Instead of thinking about technology as a way of creating new communities, it seems that online platforms like Facebook serve as a catalyst, speeding up the random interactions that people might make over time in real life.
But when there is little community at all, do these tools have much of a chance at making an impact?
Maybe my friend was on to something when he complained, “U of T is a lost cause. If you want community, go to Queen’s.”
Or Laurier.
“Our school is renowned for our community spirit and extracurricular involvement,” says recent grad Dan Hocking. At school, Hocking was heavily involved in campus politics; he now does social media and online consulting and likes to describe himself as a “fire-starter.”
He kindly offered some thoughts while packing his bags for South by Southwest Interactive, a conference in Austin, Texas that has spawned many of today’s most popular social sites.
“Facebook definitely changed the way we all interacted. It pervaded everything,” he tells me. In the hyper-socialized campus, Facebook amplifies the social-networking equivalent of noise—some of the most active Facebook groups at Laurier were about inside jokes and fake political causes.
Dan tells of an event he created called “Retro Rewind.” He blitzed the social networks and the turnout was huge. He suspects that in spite of the noise, people either never liked it,or moved on to something that was getting more attention.
“It started with FB, and died a really quiet, sad death.”
But the idea of Facebook as a catalyst is certainly the case at Laurier too. Dan describes how the Laurier science fiction club was able to grow to the point where it splintered into many subgroups. Facebook allowed people who shared the same interest in the topic to find each other.
“I still suspect that these people would’ve found their niches; it just would’ve taken a little longer for them to do so.”
It’s clear that online tools can accelerate traditional social interactions but was my naive dream of a campus-wide online community ever feasible? When I mentioned it to my editor, she promptly suggested I check out myocad.com, an online forum for students at the Ontario College of Art and Design.
At even a quick glance, it’s obvious that the site is for arts students, by arts students. The main menu is composed of a row of abstract symbols, conventional typefaces are banished, and comments take the form of comic book talk bubbles.
Myocad.com allows students to post and critique each other’s work, rate professors, and discuss all things OCAD.
It seems like a true utopia-on-the-web, except for one problem: the once-active forum has been virtually abandoned (this in spite of the site’s subtitle of “Still kicking”). The first post that I notice when I visit the site asks people to share memories from “when myocad was the shit.” Various people chime in with their stories.
I biked down to OCAD’s student centre on McCaul Street to get the scoop.
“It’s hard to casually stumble on an online community,” Lindsay Denise tells me. She’s the Finance Director of the OCAD Student Union.
Like at U of T, most OCAD students commute to class. In addition, a shortage of campus space, OCAD’s highly specialized programs, and intensive workload make it difficult to meet people outside the classroom. Is this why the site died?
“There has to be a really good reason for people to be attracted to an online space,” says Denise. When the people who were originally part of the community start graduating, it’s hard to ensure sustainability. A commenter on myocad.com had a simpler explanation: “Facebook pretty much replaced it.”
Another student union exec, who joined OCAD later than Denise, piped in that she had not even heard of the site until recently.
But after perhaps one-too-many of my reverent questions about myocad.com, Lindsay interrupts to clarify that the site’s heyday doesn’t represent OCAD’s glory days.
“I think we have lost something now that it’s not active, but nothing can replace an actual physical manifestation of community.”
Regardless of whether a similar platform could ever function for U of T as a whole, many smaller communities on campus have strong online components.
The Computer Science department hosts forums that serve as discussion boards for most undergraduate courses. But there is also space for announcements and general discussions where people from all areas of the department connect.
A recent conversation on why there are so few women in the program has pulled in current students, profs, and alumni. Many differing opinions are offered, from the nuanced to those that you could only ever see online. “Sitting in front of a computer has a negative effect on [girls’] skin,” is one example. BIOME is another forum, this one for life science communities. People come for the course notes and often stay for the conversations.
But even on these forums, most of the activity is dominated by a small number of active participants.
“Only keeners use BIOME,” a friend in life sciences admitted to me. She just used it to get the course notes.
Asked whether myocad.com was an online platform for the whole school, Lindsay Denise replies, “I don’t know if it ever was.”
Liesl*, the UpbeaT blogger, observes that for various reasons, many people may never cash in on the potential of online communities.
“If a person is busy, they’re busy. They may have access to all the information they need to be drawn in, but still be unable to actually engage in it.”
University College veterans have a secret term describing the number of people who can be reasonably expected to get involved: “the UC 250”—or “UC 150,” if one feels particularly cynical. UC has over 4,000 students.
This isn’t to say that because only a fraction of students get involved, online communities accomplish nothing.
Dan Patricio is a marketing student at Ryerson with a passion for building communities. His site says that “we need to talk” so I shot him an email saying just that. The next day, we met for coffee.
“I was a lost person [when I started] university. I wondered where the intelligent people were.”
Over time, he realized that instead of restricting himself to connecting with people in his geographical vicinity, the power of the web allowed him to go beyond campus.
He acted on this revelation, organizing a series of informal meet-ups with young people who shared similar interests. Virtually all the promotion has been done using online tools.
Patricio connected me with another friend of his from Ryerson, who also created a community beyond the borders of campus. Rob Fraser is a nursing student and the founder of nursingideas.ca, a blog that’s quickly becoming one of the strongest voices in the nursing world.
About once per week, Fraser interviews an experienced practitioner, student, or professor with questions ranging from the philosophy of nursing to ideas on how to reduce a hospital’s carbon footprint. He kindly gave up a precious morning break to tell me his story.
“The fun part about building this community is that you don’t have to rally the people that are geographically close by,” he says.
Fraser describes how he can track visitors from as far away as Singapore and Iran who are watching his videos. The resulting emails and comments are what he values most.
“Each one is an obvious sign that someone has been reached and compelled to say something.”
Patricio and Fraser both agree that without the Internet, connecting with similar people would be a time-consuming and mostly accidental process.
For Patricio, it’s all about linking up with people who can rally behind common values.
“Without barriers to communication, it doesn’t matter program or what school you’re from—it’s about building a tribe.”
For those seeking to build communities, is the model of going outside of campus the way to go? Jeffrey Pinto-Lobo of the CINSSU argues that online platforms allow for the creation of a group of people who are passionate about film, regardless of whether they are students.
“Since our Facebook group is one of the largest Toronto-based film groups, we attract organizations from around Toronto that would like organize a co-promotional event.”
The lesson seems to be that the key to online community building is more about connecting people with shared values than my original fantasy of an online home for a campus-wide community that might not even exist in real life.
Regardless, Daniel Patricio argues that the important thing is to go out and start the conversations.
For the last few decades, only the privileged have had the ability to broadcast; the Internet has flipped this around.
“We’ve been conditioned to believe that our voices don’t matter. Now we all have the ability to broadcast.”
*Last name omitted at student’s request (updated, January 11, 2015).
