By Willis Plummer

One thing that a lot of students struggle with at NYU is the lack of community. At town hall meetings, students bombard John Sexton with questions about what he is doing to create a sense of community at NYU, and last year, a special panel was held to search for ways to improve community at NYU. Unfortunately, things haven’t changed much; students still have to struggle to find friends with common interests and are forced to build micro-communities.

One place where community building is happening is on Reddit. The lovable meme-filled site is made up of ‘sub-reddits’ where people with common interests can post relevant news stories, personal anecdotes, and images. One such ‘sub-reddit’ is r/NYU, a place for all things NYU-related. On r/nyu, there have been a number of bizarre interactions but also signs of potential.

Recently, one user zyedy attempted to start an official /NYU club, but he or she was rejected because the club would have to maintain a visual presence on campus. While the administration failed to recognize the potential of this idea, other redditors did not. Another user, bhalty, reached out to the r/NYU community in the hopes of finding someone to smoke weed and play Mariokart with. Bhalty announced in the comments that he had received a number of private messages from people who were interested in getting high and playing some video games together.

Another great example of community building on r/NYU is in this adorably geeky thread where Bowman9000 announced that he had claimed the new high score for the Mrs. Pacman game in Brittany. This sparked a conversation amongst other NYU gamers who had no idea that NYU had old-school arcade games on campus. Tragically, another redditor, bitterorca, broke Bowman9000’s high score the following day.

R/NYU isn’t only about video games and weed though; last month, two users connected over a shared appreciation of indie rock legend Stephen Malkmus. From their conversation it’s unclear whether or not they actually met up at the show, but it’s certainly a possibility.

While these online connections may never translate into real-life connections, they’re a way for detached members of the NYU community to reach out without feeling overly exposed. The community on r/NYU is small for now, but it shows a lot of potential. It’s easy to imagine a world where r/NYU could be a great place to find a concert companion or a bong buddy. If NYU were to fund the r/NYU club, and the kids in charge did a good job publicizing the site, there’s no reason why this wouldn’t take off.

(image via)