The Engagement Surge
Are We Ready to Revisit Student Activities?
Target Runs, Activity Fairs, Concerts on the Quad, SAND ART. It’s all coming back, and students are turning OUT. Campuses are touting their largest classes in decades. Students are showing up to orientation, welcome week and pre-arrival activities in record numbers. Not a Student Affairs professional that I follow on Instagram or Facebook is showing anything less than stellar turnouts and record-breaking attendance at events. And while we all know that social media tends to skew into the ‘rosie’ outlook of things, by all accounts, students are ready to make the most of their campus engagement.
Howard University
And while students are ready to engage, they are also more than happy to question, challenge and push back. Gen Z and younger Millennials have been ‘shook’ over the last 5 years. Remember, while the pandemic was the icing on the sundae, the Trump administration, racially motivated attacks and crimes, an overall lack of civility and understanding have been simmering on the front burner for over 5 years. And while the incoming class of 2025 was the first to return to campus, the world was still struggling to find a sense of normalcy. The class of 2026 is here, and campuses are pulling out all the stops.
With colleges bragging about their record breaking class sizes, some campuses have decided to break the traditions and move to a more holistic approach to campus programming. Now may just be the time to go big and go bold. Mark my words, the same old same old won’t fly with this class. Their demands are higher, and their expectations of what is engagement are going to flip us on our heads. It may be time to harness the enthusiasm of the newest members of our teams to identify opportunities for tuning up traditions that give the student experience a new spin and a new look that meets students where they are at.
In addition to looking different, traditional events will feel different, with new modes of delivery, and length of events being shorter. I am predicting that events will be more likely to move to a ‘show up late, intense engagement for shorter time, and leave early, head to the next thing’ model. I also predict that dances will be making a comeback this year. I know … “But Laura, the dances were dead before the pandemic… we scheduled them and our attendance was garbage.” Listen to me, students haven’t danced … the pandemic pushed us into living in Footloose County, where young people turned to Instagram and TikTok to show their moves. Proms were HUGE this past spring, and students are clamoring for more.
Immersive events, where students can nibble around the edges learning about the metaverse and where students can log in across campus through a Twitch channel will be a standard event. Resident Assistants will challenge other Resident Assistants to head to head gaming challenges much like flag football games used to monopolize intramural competition. Make peace with it, the world is changing, but students have returned to campus with a thirst for engagement. Are you ready to create the user experience that they are seeking?