by Jenna Nicodemus
During my freshman orientation, I distinctly remember the day that upperclassmen moved back onto campus. Before that day, orientation felt almost like summer camp: too busy on grounds far too large for too few people. When the upperclassmen came, the campus suddenly felt alive. Buzzing. Halfway through my first semester, this impression stuck. I remember remarking once to a friend: “Everything feels so active. Everyone is so engaged.”
Can I say the same thing now? I’m not so sure.
I know I’m not the only one who has noticed this. SGA struggled to fill its election ballot for the first time in years (and the presidency ran uncontested, which is historically unheard of). Club execs have been struggling to find new members to replace them for the coming academic year. Event attendance has been flopping. Campus job spots are struggling to field new workers. Students just aren’t showing up.
One reason for this is that Centre students are busy. I alone struggle to have time to breathe in my schedule. On top of four courseload-intense classes, I run the Cento, have two jobs, and hang out with friends. My schedule cannot accommodate many, if any, events or additional commitments. And I know I’m not even the busiest student on Centre’s campus. Athletes, for example, are even busier, as they have to juggle practice, workout, classes, and possibly a job. Classes are also hard at Centre; students need time to work on their projects, study for exams, and so on.
However, this all isn’t anything necessarily new. Centre has always been hard, and college students have always been overworked. Some other factors are worth considering, then.
While many students are busting their butts to succeed here, many feel lethargic and detached. We’re seeing an influx of students for whom COVID disrupted more than half of their high school experience. The pandemic destabilized the educations of thousands, and many emerged disillusioned about their career journeys. For those whom the systems at large failed so drastically, it has been only natural that they conclude, “Well… education is a big joke, but I need it to get a job, so I guess I’m going to college.” These students may not even have the motivation to attend events, find campus jobs, or commit to things beyond their classes. While their outlook is understandable given their experiences, it still results in reduced engagement overall.
In addition, for many students, generative AI has taken hold of their lives. When ChatGPT pilots your education, you can put in half the effort. AI can write papers. Programs. It can invent sources for presentations. Even when a professor asks a student a question in class, they can type it into ChatGPT before reading it off from their screen (seriously, I’ve seen it happen). Students who are overreliant on this technology may not have the initiative to do anything that requires… well, effort. It’s like getting so used to training wheels that you can’t bike without them. So, a student like that may not go outside of their comfort zone to participate in campus activities, either.
All this being said, it is disingenuous to pretend that it is only because of the students that Centre’s campus activity is dwindling.
This campus overwhelms its students with resources. There are too many of them—which is a good problem to have, I suppose, but it makes things overwhelming to navigate. This results in decision fatigue. CentreNet alone is a mess. There are so many offices listed in the navigation bar, and I do not know what half of them do (what does the Dean’s Office do that is different from Academic Affairs that is different from the Registrar?). If a student has a problem, they don’t know where to go; if they want to go to a certain kind of event, they don’t know where to look. Webpages are outdated with contacts of people who don’t even work here anymore. The “right answer” is almost always buried under seven layers of ancient webpages, or searching on Google. If I were an unmotivated student, I wouldn’t even bother with half of this.
Worse still is that many of the resources, as well as the events hosted, have an astonishing amount of overlap, thus rendering many obsolete. If you’re a law student, how do you pick between the CEC of Law Government & Policy, the Pre-Law Society, and JMH Scholars Program? Suppose you choose all of them. But if each one of these organizations is offering an event, which do you pick? There is so much overlap between administrative and student organizations, as well as between student organizations themselves (I remember last year we had two art clubs). Generally speaking, too, this school has so many events. It feels like one billion have happened this year alone, one for each of the one billion clubs we have. If you’re a stressed, busy college student, how do you find the time? The burden of decision-making is exhausting for a student who goes to a rigorous college like Centre.
To top it all off is a sense of isolation from those who actually make things happen on campus. More specifically, administration. Who do you go to when you’re looking for something? Who’s responsible for what? As a student, the teams of people who decide where my money goes are completely nameless and faceless. The college as a whole does not communicate well, and this is especially evident when major issues are at stake—take the AC issue that happened recently, which took weeks of complaining to garner any response. In my experience, the Cento is one of the only ways students can feel heard on this campus, because it is one of the only channels of communication to the people who make decisions.
Outside of the Centre, then, the world is volatile. America is a politically unstable country right now. All around us, there’s war. Shootings. Protests. Violence. Scandals. Every piece hyper-documented, screamed into your face, shoved through your eye sockets by social media. With each scroll, a new ghastly headline. With each heart-tap, a guarantee you’ll see more tragedy.
So, maybe it’s no wonder that student engagement is dwindling. We’re overworked, exhausted, presented with too many options, led in circles, ghosted by admin, and living in a hectic world and an uncertain economy. Many of us, too, have been failed by the education system in the past, such as during the pandemic.
Of course, it’s easy to diagnose the problem and leave it at that. But I think there are some things that we can do to improve.
Personally, I think Centre students should consider how reliant they are on technology. Generative AI is killing our ambition and critical thinking abilities, and studies suggest it literally damages our brains. So curb the ChatGPT. If you’re a chronic doom-scroller, look into ways to get out a demotivation hole, or to lessen the presence of social media in your life (great YouTube videos exist for this). I also think it’s an important time to follow our true passions. In a world so unpredictable, it only makes sense to pursue what you love. You only have one shot at life, and it’d be a shame to waste it on anything but what makes your soul sing. At the very least, we should all take care of ourselves—get good rest, stay hydrated, eat well.
Centre, then, needs to work on consolidating just about everything: departments, resources, clubs, events, etc. Centre also needs to update the pathways for finding these resources and for connecting with clubs and organizations, because as of now they are too oblique. In addition, student welfare needs to be a bigger concern of the administration—the slow response to the AC problem, where students were literally overheating, was disheartening. Students should also be more in the know regarding the college’s future plans, goals, and current projects. We have no idea what is in the works right now or what is currently being improved upon—so to us, things just seem like the same, stagnant Centre it always has been, and long-standing issues appear unaddressed.
While the chaotic world around us won’t change for us, we can still improve ourselves and improve this campus. We can be more involved, and Centre can do better in supporting us. Acknowledging this and being there for each other is the first step in creating a community that can self-reflect and improve.
After all, we are the generation about to step into the world. We should be the change we want to see, and that starts with having a robust foundation. That’s why college is such an important stage in our lives; we should make the most of it. And maybe get this campus’ juices flowing again.