The Social Network

Banner photo by Janice Checchio

Alan Chau had big ideas to get elected president of the CGS Student Government Executive Board. Chau (’21) hoped to organize career fairs and welcome-back BBQs—even a CGS Olympics, pitting the school’s two classes against each other in a day of games. Then, just as he began his campaign in March 2020, COVID-19 forced Boston University to switch to remote learning and CGS students, many of whom had just arrived on campus in January, scattered to their hometowns around the world. Chau won his election—which CGS held online—but didn’t get to organize a BBQ or game day. Instead, he and the executive board have reinvented what they do, entirely online and on the fly.

Immediately upon taking office, Chau and the other students elected to the executive board realized their biggest challenge would be finding ways to bring students together remotely and amid great uncertainty. “Our sense of community was muddled by the fact that we were only on campus for two and a half months,” says Bailey Shen (’21), who was elected vice president.

About 70 percent of the CGS student body returned to Boston in September 2020, including Chau. The other 30 percent are spread from China to Peru. “I don’t necessarily think that you have to be in person, or on campus, to have community,” says Shen, who decided to remain at home in Los Angeles for the fall. “Community is just a more eloquent way of saying ‘networking.’ It’s trying to create interactions, trying to bridge relationships with other people.” Chau and Shen are a case study: the two now work closely every day, but they’ve never met face-to-face.

Embracing the challenge of uniting a scattered community, the CGS executive board members got creative. They hosted their first virtual event in April, within weeks of their election, an emotional town hall where they mediated a difficult conversation between students and CGS administrators about the cancellation of the college’s summer study abroad in London program.

“It was a very tumultuous time for everybody,” Shen says. Emotions were high and students had a lot of questions. The executive board has continued to host and promote events for students to talk amongst themselves and with administrators and faculty, including a conversation about the murder of George Floyd, pre- and post-fall-semester town halls, and a post-election discussion with faculty. They plan to cohost, with CGS deans, a diversity and inclusion town hall during the spring semester.

Here are five cool virtual activities and events CGS students have used to build community—and that might help you connect with friends and colleagues or add a little fun to your next Zoom social call.

1. Speed Dating

Inspired by the icebreaker activities they’d done during CGS orientation, the executive board’s first social event was an evening of online speed friend-making. “Everyone was at home, starving for some sort of social connection,” Chau says. The format was simple, based on the concept of speed dating: Chau read a question—“If you were a dorm, dining hall, or building on the BU campus, which one would you be?” or “Are we living in a simulation?”—then students paired off for two-minute discussions. More than 30 students participated and the format ended up providing inspiration for future virtual meetings and events. “Even within our own e-board meetings, often we start off with an icebreaker just to make it easier for people to talk,” Chau says.

2. Game Night

Like the speed dating event, a virtual game night in September was born from the need to offer an informal and fun way for students to socialize. They played skribbl.io, a multiplayer online game that resembles Pictionary. “I feel like we’ve embraced the inorganic-ness of it,” Chau says of the use of virtual events in place of traditional college social gatherings. “It’s opened up our horizons to meet people that we otherwise would not have talked to. That’s a good thing.”

3. CGS Cribs

Not all of the executive board’s efforts have been Zoom-based. They’re also using social media to engage with—and celebrate—the community. During October, they solicited videos from students who wanted to show off their rooms in the style of MTV Cribs, the long-running show that features celebrities giving tours of their homes. Chau launched the campaign with a tour of his own room in Myles Standish Hall that would make 50 Cent proud.

4. Humans of CGS

Humans of CGS is another social media campaign designed to introduce students and their stories. Inspired by Humans of New York, the popular and oft imitated Instagram account that profiles New Yorkers, the ongoing project already includes more than a dozen short profiles. Followers of the account can meet Isaac Kim (’21), who used his gap year to hike El Camino de Santiago, an 800-kilometer trail in Spain, and learn how unicycles helped Michaela O’Gara-Pratt (’21) and her family get through quarantine.

5. Week of Wellness

Inspired by a tradition at their Los Angeles high school, Shen and executive board treasurer Megan Lau (’21) proposed a wellness-focused week to kick off the spring 2021 semester. “So much of this semester has been an academic struggle and a mental health struggle,” Shen says. “We’re trying to address that in a way that allows people to also engage with our community.” By partnering with other organizations, and bringing in social worker Elyssa Jacobson Ackerman (’88, CAS’90) to help guide events, the executive board designed a week of activities from March 8 through 12 that will include meditation sessions, healthy eating ideas, workouts, an art show, and more.

Looking Ahead

Chau probably won’t see his class Olympics idea come to fruition, but he’s still enthusiastic about what the CGS student government has managed to accomplish this past year. “I talk to people I wouldn’t have otherwise talked to, through social media, through chats.” He says he’s also learned a lot about people by seeing what they share online—finding common ground with people he didn’t know before and learning new things about old friends. He says he discovered one friend’s passion for yoga and meditation only once their interactions were limited to social media. “The virtual space has provided people with a little place to show off,” he says.

Chau and Shen are very aware of how the pandemic has already affected their own time at CGS, truncating their first semester and wiping out their summer in London. So the questions they’re asking now, Shen says, are, “How do we prepare for the incoming class, to help familiarize them with campus and the curriculum? And how do we set up the next student government to fulfill these goals and to allow for a smooth transition?” The executive board is still figuring out how they’ll continue to use their platform later in the spring. Chau and Shen say they’re being careful not to plan events too far in advance: today’s priorities might not be relevant in a few months—or even a few weeks. “That’s a broad lesson that we’ve learned this year,” Shen says. “We have to make the best of what we have and what we know, and wait it all out.”