Social media has done for the Stern community what democracy has done for politics. Neither class rank, experience, or GPA matters on social media. With student-started and maintained Facebook groups, students of all ranks can communicate and collaborate with each other, creating a closer Stern community and increasing the camaraderie of the Stern College student body.
While Stern does have its own Google group, with emails affectionately called ‘sstuds’ sent out to the entire student body, these emails are filtered through a moderator, and there is a long list of criteria which must be met in order for a message to be approved. In contrast, the group description of Stern’s largest student-run Facebook group, Stern-In-The-Know, is “a group where anyone can ask anything related to Stern: classes, teachers, caf food, you name it,” an apt description of the group’s purpose.
Currently boasting 730 members and counting, Stern-In-The-Know is the fastest way to get YU-related information of any kind, including assignments, schedule changes, caf openings and closings, student-offered services and businesses, and other bits of important information. Any student can post as she sees fit, with no specified guidelines in place to limit the post’s content. Also, the lack of a moderator allows for no time gaps in posting; students often post to the group as late as 2, 3, and even 4 AM-and shockingly, others respond at those hours as well.
Facebook also allows for communication with past Stern students. There are quite a few alumni on the Stern-in-the-Know group; since there is no moderator, students are not automatically removed when they graduate, and some alumni prefer to remain in the group. This allows current Stern students to glean helpful advice and tips from those who’ve experienced a particular situation before them. Communication with past students also allows current students to start building their professional network in a way that is more informal and perhaps more helpful than traditional methods. Students have also been known to find mentors from the group, such as when past students answered their questions in a particularly helpful way and personal relationships were formed.
Facebook is particularly helpful in spreading university-wide events. On Facebook, one can create and share events with friends, complete with pictures and updates. This is an incredibly helpful feature for students who wish to let the Stern community know about events occurring in the university, and the system is particularly essential for those events that need to have a minimum number of students attending. With the Facebook events system, events can be shared with friends, who can then share the event with their own friends, creating a huge audience in a very short amount of time. When shared with the 730+ members of Stern-in-the-Know, along with the student council groups and individual club groups, that audience grows ever larger. Furthermore, one can see which friends are attending the event, which adds a peer pressure factor and also frequently increases not only attendance, but enthusiasm and school-spirit as well. Event organizers and invited guests can also post comments, which generate added buzz for the event. Finally, last-minute details and changes can also be posted to the event, which is integral for the smooth running of events. S-studs cannot boast such features.
While Stern-In-The-Know is the largest and most well-known Stern Facebook group, it is by no means the only one. Each student council has its own group, along with each class of YU (i.e. class of 2014, 2015, 2016) and many student-run clubs create their own pages as well. The very-active Yeshiva Rides group allows students to offer rides to fellow YU students to specified locations; students also search for rides on this group. The group Textbook Exchange is very active at the beginning and end of every semester; students post tens of posts a day where they buy and sell textbooks and other class materials to each other. YU Apartments is another active group where apartment leads (and related items such as furniture) in the Heights are posted.
Stern Compliments is a new arrival to the Stern College Facebook scene. It is not a group; rather, it appears as a person that one must ‘friend’ in order to see updates. Currently boasting 515 friends and counting, the initiative was started and is run by an anonymous Stern student, who also serves as the group’s moderator. Students submit compliments about other Stern students as a message to ‘Stern Compliments’. The anonymous moderator reviews the submitted entries for appropriateness, and then posts them as her status so that all of Stern Compliments’ friends can see it. The student to whom the post is addressed is tagged, and other students can and do ‘like’ the post. The purpose of the moderator as the middleman is that all compliments are thereby anonymous, all posted under the guise of ‘Stern Compliments’. The moderator explains her motivation for starting the group: “Often we see so much good in both our friends, and people who we are not necessarily friends with, but we never express it, either because it’s awkward, or because it just doesn’t come up. Conversely, so many people do so much good and they feel unappreciated because no one seems to notice. The Compliments page creates a perfect opportunity to show people that you do notice their greatness, but without having to feel uncomfortable telling them directly. It’s really important for people to feel that what they are doing matters and is noticed and appreciated. As students of Yeshiva University, we can make that move, and contribute to the love between all the people of Am Yisrael.”
One of the main benefits of attending Yeshiva University is tapping into a community that is at once close-knit and diverse. Student-run Facebook groups serve as the catalyst that links these paradoxical elements of Stern College, creating a student body that is warm, cohesive, and most importantly, connected.