When the idea of college comes to mind, there’s a sense of belongingness associated with it. It is where you find yourself, make lifelong friendships and have a sense of unification. However, according to some Piedmont students, our campus is lacking that.

According to former students, Piedmont used to have a tight-knit sense of community. Everyone spent time around the quad, people went outside of their comfort zones and there was a stronger social dynamic across campus.

“Everything seemed to have a bit more heart… a little less corporate,” Said senior Levi Randall-Doublet.

The Commons was built to create a better sense of community. It was a place for people to eat, to hang out, to study and to work out. And it certainly felt like all of these things when it first opened in 2015.

Now it’s 2018, and this sense of community is gone. People go to class, possibly go to the cafeteria for food, then hunker down in their dorms for the rest of the day. No one uses the quad, except for CAB events on occasion. No one really ventures outside of their friend group. There’s an intense lack of socializing around Piedmont College.

“When I go to other college campuses, there is a hustle and bustle about the community there,” said junior Cheyenne Turner. “Students are seen hanging out around the campus, interacting with their peers and using all different parts of the facilities offered on their campus, but here at Piedmont it feels like there’s two separate parts of campus: the main campus, which consists of class buildings, and the living part of campus, which consists of dorms and the Commons. When class isn’t going on, it’s deserted.”

Where did this all go wrong?

Some people say that Piedmont has gotten too big, but that shouldn’t stop our sense of community. Others say that it’s because we now lack a center, which is what the quad used to function as.

Either way, as students, we must find a way to bring back a sense of college community here at Piedmont. Let’s stop holing ourselves up in our dorms with Netflix and get outside and talk to each other. It’s time to bring Piedmont College back to life.