BY JACQUELINE SMALL

In print | Published October 21, 2010

Swarthmore can be a place where quirky high schoolers hope to come into their own and make friends who have similar interests. For some, this becomes reality, but others are left struggling, unable to find their niche within the Swarthmore Bubble. Karen Henry, dean of the classes of 2013 and 2014, and Daniel Livney, a clinical intern with Counseling and Psychological Services, hope that a new group they are forming will help those who find themselves on the outskirts of Swarthmore. “There needs to be room for students like this, who find that this isn’t what they had hoped.” Henry said.

The group, which is unnamed, is geared toward first-year students, but will be open to anyone who feels left out socially. An e-mail advertising the group was sent to first-years, sophomores and juniors.
Henry said, “I’ve had the experience of being the first-year dean two years in a row, and I think that there are students who are struggling in silence over not feeling like they’re fitting in … and as a somebody who’s trained as a therapist, I thought, I love groups, personally, and I think they can be very powerful.” She said she is concerned about those students who find difficulty in making social connections, and wants the group to help them. She believes that for students who face these challenges, talking to people with similar issues can be very helpful.

Livney, who is entering his second year with CAPS, realized the power groups hold while working on his dissertation. “They can be a useful way for people to feel connected to one another, and to learn about what makes us all both different and alike,” he said in an e-mail. “As an intern at CAPS, it’s no surprise that I’m a strong believer in the value of individual psychotherapy. [But] I felt that there were things that could be done with groups more readily than with one-on-one therapy, and this was one of those types of problems.”

Though Speak 2 Swatties has run groups, workshops and events for the emotional and mental health of students, CAPS does not manage any. Most of the existing groups of that nature are managed by the dean’s office, and include the Swarthmore Wellness Advisory Team (SWAT Team), Acquaintance Sexual Assault Prevention (ASAP) and the Sexual Misconduct Advisors and Resource Team (SMART Team). Because of the deans’ office’s experience with coordinating these groups, Livney contacted Henry toward the end of the last academic year.

Henry said, “As the first-year dean, there are a number of students who always come to my attention. Either they come to my attention because they come to my office asking me to fill out forms because they’re interested in transferring or they come to my attention because they’ve been talking to other people, such as parents and RAs … about their struggles.” Henry hopes that providing a place for frustrated or lonely students on campus will help them overcome the difficulty of connecting with new people.

The group, which will meet once a week for five weeks, will focus on helping the individual students learn strategies that have worked for other people, and discussing the specific difficulties the members feel they are experiencing. Its first meeting will be this week, but at press time, an exact date had not been set. Though the meetings will be closed for the privacy of the students, new members will be accepted after the initial meeting, if they express interest.

Henry said some upper-class students have contacted her in order to offer to act as resources for the younger students, but nearly all the people interested in being in the group are first-year students. So far, 11 people replied with “questions and interest,” according to Henry. “We’re very happy with [the] response.”

The Phoenix approached eight first-years, none of whom said they would be interested in joining. Dan Cho ’13 said that he probably would not have joined such a group. “It might be helpful for some people, but I think it might have been kind of an awkward thing to talk about. I mean, what do you say? ‘Sorry, I’ve got to go now, I’ve got a meeting about making friends’?”

Will Hopkins ’11, an RA, liked the idea of the group, but had doubts about how successful it will be.
“I think it’s a great idea, but it seems like the sort of thing that I don’t know if all the freshmen would use it,” Hopkins said. “I think students who are already pretty outgoing are more likely to use something like that, so I don’t know if it would get the sort of people who are more likely to want more friends.”

Livney expects that the group itself will be a help for its members. “Sometimes, just figuring out that other people are in the same situation that you are in, and also hearing ideas from other students about what their experiences are can be helpful. Part of the job Karen and I see for ourselves is to just help that conversation along,” he said.

Hopkins observed that the social atmosphere first-years are first introduced to might not be conducive to friendships for everyone. “A lot of freshmen’s social lives are sort of arbitrarily assigned. You have your CA group, and you have your hall. [As RAs] we try to build hall life, but it’s great to have other things outside these semi-arbitrary groups that are designed to give students a chance to get to know each other.”

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