By Emma Thai

Since classes were moved online in mid-March, W&L students have been experiencing an unprecedented school environment. Campus is closed, but the W&L community is more connected than ever.

Greek organizations are preserving their brother- and sisterhood through social media and group video call programs such as Zoom.

Andrew Harris, Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity’s social chair, said in an interview that they are using their fraternity GroupMe and chapter Zoom calls to ensure that they all stay connected.

They are also facilitating events to keep their relationships with sororities active. Lambda had planned a mixer with Chi Omega on April 3 and decided to make it virtual, Harris said.  

“We’ve had one virtual zoom mixer,” he said. “We thought that it would be fun to replace it and do it online to give people something to do and we ended up getting a pretty good turnout”

Lambda also plans on holding their Spring Term formal over zoom.

Kappa Alpha Theta sorority is finding innovative ways of staying connected too. But unlike Lambda, they are choosing to focus more on social media.

Ann Douglas Lott, who is responsible for Theta’s Instagram page, said that they wanted to give members the chance to uplift the seniors and give them a proper goodbye by making a post for each graduating senior. Other sorority members comment their favorite things about them.

“A bunch of our seniors aren’t going to have that same senior experience everyone talks about, so we are doing online shoutouts,” Lott said. “Not only to make them feel appreciated but to keep everyone else connected and keep supporting them.”

She has also started making birthday posts over Instagram stories for every Theta whose birthday happens while they are staying-at-home.

“Because we are in isolation, it feels like you don’t have that same connection to people that you do on campus,” Lott said.  “If it’s your birthday and you’re in isolation, that’s going to be terrible, so that (Instagram posts) is one thing to help you keep connected to your friends back at school.”

W&L’s Panhellenic Council focuses on bridging the gap between otherwise divided sororities. Margaret Shetler, Panhel’s programming chair, said they were concerned with how isolation could keep people from spending valuable time with women from other sororities.

She came up with the idea of having a positivity exchange, where women from different sororities are matched to be like positivity “pen-pals.” The idea is that they would exchange uplifting messages to support each other during these difficult times.

“It’s hard to keep people engaged, especially if we’re not all on campus,” Shetler said. “We just wanted to foster those relationships that don’t get the chance to form since we’re not all together”   

Shetler hopes to get more women involved to make as big of a difference as possible.

But Greek life is not the only aspect of campus culture still thriving.

The GroupMe group for independent students looks almost identical to that of a fraternity or sorority. Members discuss the housing lottery, class registration and which professors to avoid.  

Nicholas Nguyen is a first year who is in the GroupMe group said it’s mostly used for random questions from other students.

“People don’t hang out on that GroupMe, he said. “People just kind of pop in ask a question, pop out”

The fraternity and sorority GroupMes function in a similar manner. No one is trying to talk to their best friends, they just use it as a resource. Community is not just about talking to your friends; it’s also about the important day-to-day, potentially less-interesting discussions students have with each other.    

Friday Night Underground or FUDG is a place where every student is welcome to come together and watch live music performances. FUDG Director Micah Holcomb said that they wanted to maintain the core values of FUDG while moving online.

“It’s really all about having a space that is truly the entire student body’s space,” he said.

To achieve an inclusive and interactive space online, Holcomb decided to use Instagram live to reach as many students as possible.

“Having a live version was actually pretty important to us when we’re trying to preserve as much as we can to transplant online,” he said.  

Holcomb said that some alums have even begun to tune in and have been excited to relive FUDG. He said that they will try to use social media to keep alums and current students more connected when FUDG returns to in-person events.

“I think the unique thing about FUDG is we have the flexibility to do this like that,” Holcomb said. “I like to think we’re really responsive to the student body and want they enjoy.”

Students are enjoying social media more than ever. In a Google Form about social media use that went out to various W&L students from all Greek organizations and club affiliations, 85% of respondents said that they used social media more often than while on campus. 54 students filled out the survey.

Similarly, as seen in the visualization below, most students are using social media for at least one more hour per day than usual.

That data alone does not show that they are consuming W&L-related content. But, as seen in the bar chart below, most students who took the survey thought that social media was helping them stay connected to the W&L community.

While an Instagram post or Zoom meeting can’t fully emulate the feeling of being on campus, it does make students value what they have. If nothing else, being off campus has reminded students what truly makes Washington and Lee a special place: the people.

When asked what he missed most about W&L, Holcomb put it best, “It’s not about the services we provide for each other. It’s just about each other.”

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This article was written for my digital journalism class when we were sent home in Spring 2020. We had to write a multimedia piece on the W&L community, so I chose to write about the W&L community during COVID, and how people chose to cope. There is also an audio component at the beginning. This project was more than just about writing, it also demonstrates my audio and data visualization capabilities.