For the class of 2027, this year included the second semester of our first year and the first half of our sophomore slumps. Looking back at 2024 in its entirety, I think about the classes I’ve taken, the football and basketball games I’ve gone to, the jobs I’ve worked and the people I’ve met. But I think it’s impossible to salute this fading year without also remembering the places I've lived.
When I first committed to UNC, through deep research into the residence halls and campus living Reddit threads, I found that North Campus was preferred to South Campus in almost every metric except sociability. Scampus’ shortcomings in every regard, paired with its frolicsome atmosphere, create a place where you’re humbled and brought together with most of the other first-years — it is incomparable to any other housing experiences.
At the beginning of the year, our class was still living in dorms. 77 percent of the first-year class elected to live on campus while 23 percent lived in Granville Towers. Of the on-campus first-years, almost three fourths of students chose to live on South Campus.
Living in the over-900-person residence halls like Hinton James or Ehringhaus meant meeting new people in the elevators every day, laughing with strangers that you’d probably never see again. The elevators were akin to sardine cans, stuffed with people. I never felt more trauma bonded to a group of people than the time when a group of us were dropped down to the basement floor and thought we were going to die.
Scampus sardines could also be seen in the P2P on weekend nights, packed together and gripping anything as the bus whipped through Stadium Drive or Ridge Road. On weekdays, large groups of us would start our over-20 minute walk from Scampus to our classes, talking about the lack of hot water in February and the Asian lady beetle infestations in March.
The "filtered" water fountains didn’t work half of the time and the crowded laundry room had washers that would violently shake while people played sand volleyball right outside. In April, my friends and I witnessed a “wedding” on the basketball court with people watching and blasting music from the balconies.
After coming back from Franklin Street on a Friday night at the beginning of second semester, HoJo was woken up around 2 a.m. when the fire alarm went off. All 900 of us were freezing — but at least we froze together.
We would watch the sunset on the Craige Parking Deck, listen to people running around in the stairwells and pack into the lounges to study during finals week with at least thirty other students who wanted to use the scratched-up whiteboards.
Now, living in a mid-campus dorm in my second half of 2024, I don’t have the same sense of community. I hardly talk to my neighbors and suitemates, and it feels like a ghost town of people coming and leaving the building at different times.
