About
Duke’s social life has changed dramatically throughout this academic year. Students have adapted to COVID-19 restrictions by finding unique ways to maintain their relationships with their friends and peers. Differences in housing situations, academic cohorts, and personal COVID-19 precautionary choices influence the ways students now choose to interact with one another. We’ve witnessed these shifts both from a distance and personally, however, we never took the time to fully investigate the changing social lives of college students during the time of COVID, until now.
Through interviews, sound recordings, images, videos, and surveys, we aim to create an archive of Duke student’s social experiences during the 2020-2021 school year. We hope that it will provide a larger picture of how the student body has had to adapt and serve as a time capsule that captures just how different this year was in terms of socializing.
Team
All three of us researchers are juniors who live off campus. Before COVID, we anticipated living on campus for all four of our years. However, due to the nature of Duke’s housing policy during the fall semester, we all opted to live off campus for our junior and senior years. This is a stark departure from what we initially anticipated, and we feel that our socializing habits have changed as a result of this decision. One reason we wanted to investigate Duke students’ social lives in the time of COVID was to better understand the social life that we left behind.
Annie Lee
Hello! I am a junior majoring in environmental science & cultural anthropology! Once Duke goes back to normal, I’m looking forward to eating a veggie single with tater tots at 3am or grabbing pumpkin bread from Vondy’s at 4am.
Akash Meesa
Hi! My name is Akash and I’m a junior studying Neuroscience & Computer Science. I can’t wait to get back into Cameroon Indoor to cheer on the Blue Devils basketball team again and watch them crush UNC when Duke gets back to normal.
Kate leonard
Hi, my name is Kate, and I am a junior studying Cultural Anthropology, East Asian Studies, and Neuroscience. I miss pre-COVID Duke life, and I can’t wait to be able to catch up with friends at Pitch over a veggie single (no cheese) with french fries at 2am. Who knows, maybe I’ll even ~socialize~ there long enough to where I run into Annie on the way out.
