Uphill battle to revive university social life
While Welcome Fest brought hundreds of students back to campus, what has been the ongoing cost of nearly a year of online learning? Mia Castagnone investigates the toll COVID has taken on USYD’s societies.
One of the highlights of university for many is participating in clubs and societies. While universities in Sydney are seeing a small return of students to campus, COVID-safe measures have meant the social aspect of campus life is yet to fully recover.
Despite the relative stability across Australia, the impacts of COVID-19 continue to be felt in many aspects of campus life. Universities remain limited in their ability to host major events and first year students like Daniel Maini, have become part of a forgotten cohort whose university experience has been almost entirely online.
“I was not very involved in uni at all last year. I had signed up to a couple societies, but I don’t actually remember joining any events. I made a couple friends, but they were all in tutorials.”
Daniel enrolled at the University of Sydney (USYD) in 2020 and like most first-year students was eager to be a part of all aspects of the university experience. Yet only three weeks into semester, universities across Australia moved to online learning and welcome week became the first and only event new students participated in.
“I’d like to get more involved this year, but personally I think my motivation was lost a bit since I’ve gotten used to doing things online,” Daniel said.
Orientation programmes across universities have had to adopt hybrid models of online and on-campus experiences to meet COVID-safe measures. The start of the year is the busiest point in the calendar for many clubs and societies - it’s a vital way for them to recruit new members.
President of the University of Sydney Union, Ms. Irene Ma agrees that it will be hard to go back to
university-as-normal.
“Unfortunately, many COVID-related restrictions will continue to exist in 2021. Every event, no matter its size or nature, has to be conducted in a COVID safe way. As a result, it may not be feasible to host some events in a way that they usually would be held,” said Ms. Ma.
Dr. Petr Matous from the School of Engineering at the University of Sydney explains that students’ societies are an essential aspect of many students’ university lives, positively affecting personal as well as academic achievements.
“Societies are important because universities are not only institutions for transferring knowledge from teachers to students in classrooms. Active involvement in student societies fosters the development of interpersonal competencies, which are not fully attainable through lectures alone,” said Dr. Matous.
The loss of face to face socialisation has had a disproportionate impact on different student cohorts. In 2020, data collected by the International Education Association of Australia found that feelings of anxiety, depression and loneliness were particularly experienced by international students.
“While many young people far from home struggle with loneliness and mental health issues, organizing and participating in club and society events fosters students’ feelings of fitting in and belonging - which also increase retention rates,” Dr. Matous said.
Not only do societies act as a facilitator of friendships amongst like-minded people, they also offer an escape from the classroom where students can develop life-long leadership and teamwork skills.
“Clubs and societies are one of the most predominant forms of student experience, and we would not be complete without them,” Ms. Ma explained.
For many societies, despite the affordances of Zoom and other social networking technologies, some activities are simply not transferable online. One thing we’ve learnt from this is to value and treasure the physical element of interactions between individuals, especially during this highly developed e-world.
Societies are drivers of students’ integration at university and will play a key role in revitalising connections in the coming university year. While institutions have a strong desire to rebuild their community, it will undoubtedly be an uphill battle to recover their tender ties with students.