Building community on a big campus

Has “student life” become hard to find at a school of 91,000 students?

As I enter my fourth year as an undergrad, I’m realizing more and more that if university students like to do one thing, it’s to complain about the university they attend. In fact, it is one of the best things about university students, and perhaps even a natural by-product of a post-secondary education. Universities expose students to philosophical conceptions of humanity, civic duty, and equality, and give them the opportunity to poke, prod at, and challenge what they hear using newly minted critical-thinking skills. Those same universities shouldn’t be surprised when students inevitably turn their criticism on the institution that gave them the ability to articulate it. 

This tendency towards grievance may explain why so many of my peers go around touting the fact that the University of Toronto was recently ranked 19th globally by the Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings while simultaneously decrying the sorry state of the University’s mental health and accessibility resources. Students are proud of their university and the quality of the education it gives them, but that pride leads them to expect more out of every aspect of the university experience, and to be understandably disappointed when the university fails to deliver. 

Precisely what students should be able to expect from their university has long been a topic of controversy. In a different time and place, the concept of a university taking any responsibility for the general wellbeing of its students would have seemed ludicrous to administrators. Yet today, “student life” is considered a crucial component of a post-secondary institution’s obligations to its students. Still, the way this obligation manifests itself ranges from the almost resort-like experiences offered by some liberal arts colleges in the United States, to the more hands-off approach of many British institutions. It is clear that no one solution will satisfy every student and work for every school. 

For UofT students, the problem of how large a role we can expect our university to play in our everyday lives is made even more complicated by the sheer size of the school we attend. How can a university of 91,000 students across three campuses possibly cater to the needs of every single one? The question goes beyond the topics of mental health and accessibility (with which it certainly resonates) to a broader examination of university life: with such an immense number of enrolled students, can a definitive “University of Toronto experience” be said to exist, and if so, does the university administration really have any control of what it looks like? 

The answer to both questions is no, with the conciliatory suggestion that UofT might at least be able to meet you halfway. For incoming students, it’s important to recognize that the experience of an Arts student at St. Mike’s who plays varsity volleyball will be vastly different from a New College Sciences student with a passion for musical theatre. While this much seems obvious, it reveals the underlying truth that the University of Toronto is in many respects a fragmented campus. The sporting events, performances, special lectures, etc. that take place in the innumerable enclaves of UofT often have no bearing on the school at large, and exist solely for the people directly involved and their peers. This in itself isn’t any great shame, but it certainly gets in the way of generating a university-wide sense of community.  

Part of this has to do with the fact that so many resources and opportunities are offered through individual colleges, faculties, and other non-centralized groups. While guides are offered by the UTSU that attempt to compile these opportunities into one definitive list, it doesn’t change the fact students will surely be disappointed if they go in search of the “hub” of one activity or another on campus. “The college you’re in doesn’t really matter” is a commonly heard statement among students on the St. George campus. For the large part, it’s true. I myself am a UC student who has been involved with St. Mike’s and Vic theatre, and a Faculty of Music choir (not to mention the fact that this article is being published in the Victoria College newspaper). What my experience has shown me though is that, while the college you belong to doesn’t matter, the colleges themselves matter immensely. 

The college system provides an alternate narrative to that which states that UofT is too big for any one student to be significant. When I was accepted to UofT, my father, an alum himself, gave me some advice: “Whatever you do, find ways to make it small.” At the time he was in school (the mid-80s), UofT was still considerably large, but that piece of advice has only become more valuable as the University has become more sizeable. However, for my father, making a big school small meant joining a fraternity— a fact which to this day I cannot wrap my head around.  

For me, it means seeking out as many nooks and crannies of this big and confusing campus as I can. It’s the places where those around you all seem like they have some sort of vested interest in being there that stick out to me as being of particular importance. It doesn’t matter whether the thing that unites everyone there is a love for astrophysics or a love for big couches; in either case, a real sense of community is more likely to form around that common interest. School-wide community is lacking in UofT as a university at large, and that’s not likely to be remedied, but it doesn’t mean that community at UofT can’t exist. Students are, for better or for worse, responsible for creating it themselves. 

Seeking community as a way of finding support is of course no secret trick. It is a simple truth, albeit one that can get as lost as the many students who have failed to realize its importance. It’s worth returning to that favourite pastime of university students, airing grievances about the school they attend. The fact that such a simple and straightforward thing as the relationship between community and support could be lost among the daily goings-on of university life is a failing of the university itself. The effort to foster community must certainly belong to students, when institutions like UofT fail to do so. In the immediate future, the onus is on students to carve out a world for themselves at a large and unwieldy school, wherever and however they can.  

The best way to do that is to start small. Opt for the college library reading room over the soul-crushing hunk of concrete that is the Robarts Library; seek out the resources and opportunities that all of the colleges and faculties (not just your own) have to offer; speak to a real, human registrar instead of letting ACORN and Degree Explorer tell you what to do. Most importantly, rely on other students to foster community rather than waiting for the administration to do it. In the present, these are some of the steps one must take to carve out a world for themselves within UofT. But as students who are practically programmed to expect more from their university, it’s time to re-evaluate whether a school as big as UofT must be alienating, and find ways to ensure that it meets students halfway. If nothing else, hopefully that will cut down on the number of people joining frats.