What Makes UC Blue Ash so special? What distinguishes it from UC Uptown? You don’t have to be a genius to see the difference in the interactions between the students of both campuses. After discussions with my classmates and after observing a specific area of our Blue Ash campus, I asked myself, “Why does our campus have such a different atmosphere than the Clifton one?”
I’ve spent plenty of time on both campuses, and I can easily say that they are both communities. But these two communities have pretty drastic differences. After I talked to some of my peers, we decided that UCBA is less of a united community than UC Clifton. You can see and hear that difference without having to pay too much attention. People walk around wearing Xavier University T-shirts and hoodies, they spend a lot of time on their phones, and they don’t seem to befriend one another as easily.
Why is that? We chalked it up to UCBA being a place used solely for academic advancement. People come here to study, not to make friends. They’re worried about their classes and grades. At Clifton, students have the recreation center, sporting events, parties, and more. All of those places and events can lead to interpersonal interactions. People rooting for the same team and going to the same social functions can easily develop long-lasting friendships. We don’t have anything similar to that here, so we don’t spend as much time befriending one another. Most friends we make are in individual classes, which leads to fizzled-out friendships after finals come around.
So, while it is possible to make good friends at UC Blue Ash, it seems like you can make twice as many friends with half as much effort downtown. Here, it’s easy to get caught up in your studies and not worry about forming relationships with those around you. But we can’t ignore the value of friendship, and we should all spend a little less time in the social media world and a little more time in the real one.
