Six years ago, I was a student at Simon Fraser University and employed as a Community Advisor in a first year residence.  It was my job to create events that would not only draw new students from their rooms, but provide an avenue for them to build meaningful friendships, and a sense of community.

It would take hours for me to churn out ideas for said events, and planning them would take even longer.  I always put in a great effort and was often exhausted by the struggle of pulling first years from their shells.  That said, I did my job with vigour and have always looked back with a sense of pride for how successful I was… that is, until now.

Enter the ping-pong table…

I have recently gone back to school and like many of the students felt a little apprehensive about my surroundings and meeting new people.  I wasn’t sure where I fit in – if at all – and learning new names was a chore.  As a ‘professional student’, I have repeated this process multiple times and so, I was use to it.  I felt sorry for the kids coming straight from high school who were experiencing this for the first time.

Something was different about this campus though.  It seemed that many of the first year students were learning other student’s names quite quickly, exchanging numbers, social networking and making plans for after school.  A lot of them were even hanging out with students in other programs and years.  I kept asking, “How do you know that person?” and the response was always the same “Ping-pong”.

I decided to investigate.  I followed a classmate to the far corner of the school, and down eight flights of stairs.  There at the bottom of a stairwell, sat one standard size ping-pong table.  Absent, were any computers, music, TVs, and stores, but students from all years, ethnicities, religious backgrounds, genders and sexual orientation were commencing.  They were all there for one thing: to play ping-pong.

Between shifts, they shared stories about their families, interests, and programs.  They complained about the school, their teachers, and encouraged success in one another.  When playing they would heckle each other and laugh, then they would go off to their next classes and others would arrive to play a round.

I have spent my fair share of time on school campuses – seven of them, and counting – and I have never seen campus community develop so quickly.  I was amazed at how easy it was for this ping-pong table to create a sense of unity.  I was impressed with how effortlessly it got students to put aside their biases and learn about other cultures and ways of life.  I was envious to see that even the shyest student in my program was there engaged in the activity.  That was the moment, my success as a community builder was eclipsed by the ping-pong!

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