Quincy University has been looking to create better connections among their students on campus ever since the pandemic began, figuring out ways to get students out of their dorm and more comfortable meeting unlikely friends. 

One of their newest experiments is to go digital, and bring social activity into class in order to figure out more about the students in the classroom. One social media class has created the #HowuliveQU hashtag on their TikTok account for students to attempt to create a viral trend on campus. 

The idea is to have a space available for students to showcase their living areas, in a style similar to the show MTV Cribs, where students are able to express themselves using their room and add context for students to learn more about an unknown classmate. 

Students like junior Kennedy Fleer think this could be a new start to connect with students.

“I think it would be a really cool way for students to connect outside of class because almost everybody on campus has Tik Tok or other social media apps so it would be including everyone into conversation instead of a select few who see a random poster on campus about events,” Fleer said. 

While the assignment is fairly new and only a few posts have been submitted, junior Angel Ruiz hopped on the trend right away and has been viral on campus from the challenge, receiving over 2,000 views since the upload on April 11. He explains the importance of knowing the media and having fun goes a long way for posts.

“Looking at the project, I just came into it laid back and wanted to share a laugh when I was presenting my dorm. It was able to get some traction from my friends and teammates posting it around adding more to the conversation. I also liked this because it allows students to get out of their shell and be more comfortable talking online since we have for a while now,” Ruiz said. 

Ruiz further hopes that more students will join him in the contest soon, in order to add more conversation to the living scenarios students face while at school in Quincy. 

While it’s fun to see university teachers and staff start to implement more social media tactics in the aspect of education, it’s tempting to see the transformation socializing on campus will have if we continue to focus on media interaction for news, alerts, and promotion for the school.

Junior Christie Settles believes this can help keep their students fully engaged throughout the school year.

“I think our school offices and staff should integrate this too. Do you know how many times I miss an event because they place it in one email while I’m trying to complete my busy schedule through the day? If messages and emails could be displaced throughout social media, students could stay up to date quicker while surfing their socials which we all are programmed to do at this point anyway,” Settles said. 

As this could be an interesting plan for campus operations in the future. Students can first join the dorm conversation at Quincy University on TikTok to learn more about their fellow students. Don’t forget to use the hashtag #HowuliveQU when posting to join the conversation.