Last Friday, the Office of Inclusion and Diversity sponsored the first Friday Connections event in Moulton Union. With the goal of helping students relax and process the end of the week, the event featured bingo, various partnerships with student organizations and food catered by Bowdoin Dining Services. Going forward, Friday Connections will take place on the fourth Friday of each month.

Director of Institutional Inclusion and Diversity Programs Katy Stern was pleased with how the first Friday Connections turned out.

“One of the things that has become evident is [the Bowdoin community needs] to connect,” Stern said. “We need community. There are a lot of people in their community who aren’t really connected, and then there are the people who haven’t connected yet. And so we’re going to provide the opportunity for students, staff and faculty to connect with each other, and that’s the very important part—that we come to connect together.”

In order to accomplish this, Stern sought out campus partners to work with. For Friday’s event, these collaborations included bingo with the Board Game Club, crafting with the First-Year Student Council and a special guest, Professor of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies Keona “DJ Proffee” Ervin. The class councils will switch off who sponsors the event each month, with the junior class partnering for the next event.

“The idea is to have different partners each time, different people connecting,” Stern said. “The only piece that I’m really hoping to spread is the idea of … invitations and the idea that maybe, if you’re a student, you invite a staff member you know, a professor or a teammate. Maybe, if you’re a professor, you invite some students. We want people to get a warm invitation, because some folks might need that invitation to come.”

This month, the First-Year Class Council facilitated the event. President Andy Mugisha ’28 and Vice President Misha Alibhai ’28 helped people to their seats, interacted with guests and led the bingo game.

“There were staff members, faculty and faculty family members who also came,” Mugisha said. “It was kind of everyone. And it was really cute; I got to sit with a five-year-old. Once she saw me, she sat with me and told me about all her hobbies, and she actually won the bingo.”

Mugisha expressed that, despite having a small campus, interacting with other students beyond the classroom can be difficult, but events like Friday Connections help to break down that barrier.

“Usually when we have events like these, they are tailored to one graduating class so we don’t get cross-class connections,” Mugisha said. “This was really fun and just something chill to do and meet new people.”

Regarding the connections that came out of the event, Mugisha mostly described his personal experience.

“I did learn some people’s names that I always see, so that was something that came out of [the event] for me,” Mugisha said.

Maya Tokioka ’27 attended the event after seeing the information from the posters around Smith Union.

“I love meeting new people,” Tokioka said. “I’m a big social butterfly, so that was one reason I wanted to go.”

Tokioka has previously attended Dinner with Six Strangers, a Bowdoin tradition that also focuses on cross-campus connections, where six attendees—carefully selected to have little to no previous connection—eat a meal together.

Friday Connections has a similar premise but allows for more flexibility in programming and the number of attendees, as demonstrated by the broad array of campus community members who were present for the first event.

Tokioka felt this structure and the activities at Friday Connections introduced her to new people and hopes to see further community building at future iterations of the event.

“They did a really good job with creating fun activities that make people meet people outside of their friend group,” Tokioka said. “That was, I thought, very effective.”

The next event on February 28 will include cornhole with the junior class council, trivia with Boody-Johnson House, mocktail sampling and another appearance from Professor Keona “DJ Proffee” Ervin.