On a chilly Wednesday evening, the Riverside Lounge is filled with warmth, laughter and the smell of steaming food. Bowls of spaghetti, vegetables and desserts sit on the table as students, senior learners and organizers gather to share a meal.
These community dinners are a deliberate effort to combat loneliness on campus, providing space for connection in a world that often prioritizes speed and screens over human interaction.
Tahniyaat Ahmed, an international mechanical engineering freshman from Bangladesh, said community dinners like these can bridge barriers.
“You get to meet a lot of people from different perspectives and you get to learn a lot,” Ahmed said.
Coming from a close-knit community where everyone shared her culture and language, Ahmed said she initially felt isolated. She added that community dinners like these have offered her a sense of belonging.
“These dinners are great; it’s stress-free, and I feel very connected. You get to talk, feel free and at peace, and you don’t have to feel pressure to be perfect,” Ahmed said. “They’re really nice people, and I love them.”
Through student-led programs, University-led initiatives and support from staff in the Office of Student Affairs and International Student and Scholar Services, combating loneliness is a collaborative effort.
Rooted in shared time
The Riverside Lounge dinners are coordinated by Aron Kiehne, a sophomore majoring in urban studies and anthropology, and Steve Mullaney, chaplain and executive director of the University Episcopal Community that partners with Andrew-Riverside Presbyterian Church on the Riverside Lounge project. Their partnership aims to create a space that feels like a second home for attendees.
Kiehne said it is obvious there is an issue with campus loneliness.
“It’s impacting a lot of people’s lives, and you can see it when the University put up the fences along the Washington Ave. Bridge,” Kiehne said.
The Washington Avenue Bridge, with fences built after two students died by suicide, has become a haunting reminder of the isolation some students face.
The Hidden Epidemic
University data on loneliness and its effects are unclear. However, Minnesota reported 860 suicides in 2022, according to the Minnesota Department of Health.
Dr. Carrie Henning-Smith, associate professor in the School of Public Health, said social isolation is part of a much larger trend.
“Loneliness can be defined as a mismatch between how much social connection people need and how much people are getting,” Henning-Smith said. “In short, loneliness means that someone’s social needs are not being met.”
Henning-Smith said loneliness is a public health issue hidden in plain sight. It affects individual risks of depression, anxiety, chronic illness and mortality.
“Younger adults have some of the highest rates of loneliness and are also at an age where prevention of longer-term conditions is especially important,” Henning-Smith said.
There are about 58,000 students enrolled at the University of Minnesota, with more than 1,000 campus student groups. Yet in an environment filled with plenty of people and clubs, Henning-Smith said students may still feel disconnected.
“College campuses provide many opportunities for social connection, but feeling like you can’t find good connections could be even more isolating and lonely when you see others having strong connections around you,” Henning-Smith said.
Henning-Smith said social media amplifies the problem, as more students prefer online platforms over face-to-face interactions.
“Loneliness has always been a part of being human, but rates are especially concerning in recent years,” Henning-Smith said. “This is in part because of major disruptions that we’ve had to our social lives recently, especially the pandemic and our changing relationship with technology and social media.”
Henning-Smith said a result of the cultural shift is people on college campuses need to work harder to build their social muscles and find ways to foster meaningful connections with one another.
An individualist system
The struggle to belong in the University is tied to American culture itself.
On Hofstede’s cultural dimensions scale, America is ranked 91 out of 100 among the most individualistic countries in the world. In a system such as this, independence and self-reliance are seen as celebrated characteristics — making community and connection undervalued.
A 2021 cross cultural study, the BBC Loneliness Experiment, found among the 46,054 participants across different countries and age groups, loneliness increased with individualism and decreased with age.
For international students who come to universities, the individualistic mentality can often come as a cultural shock.
Beth Isensee, an associate director at International Student Scholar Services, said international students can face issues navigating America’s individualistic culture.
“We’re an individualized culture, not so much a community culture, and you have to ask for help,” Isensee said. “If you do, you’re going to get a lot of support. If you don’t, then that will cause further isolation and further loneliness.”
Isensee said cross-cultural exchange is important in building meaningful relationships all students can benefit from.
With programs like Global Gopher Experiences, Small World Coffee Hour and the International Student Leadership Retreat, international students and domestic students have the ability to learn and grow from each other as they navigate campus life.
“The University is a great place to start building skills to work with diverse groups of people,” Isensee said. “When students go into the workforce, you need to be able to work in diverse teams, and you don’t get to choose your coworkers so you need to be able to navigate the differences.”
Isensee said community-based initiatives help provide international students the opportunity to increase their leadership skills and find ways to build communities built on understanding.
“The goal is to move towards each other, and it begins with awareness and asking questions,” Isensee said.
Building Belonging
Loneliness is a structural challenge as well as an emotional barrier.
Meaghan Miller Thul, associate vice president for Student Engagement and Belonging, said her office works across a wide range of programs aimed at fostering connections on campus.
Thul said the office seeks to create spaces that help students discover who they are and get the full university experience.
“We’re focused on supporting students, creating space for engagement, creating opportunities and really advising, coaching and championing students to learn who they are, and be their best selves as students,” Thul said.
Thul says the University tracks belonging statistics through the Student Experience in the Research University Survey. This tool helps universities and professionals, like Thul, understand how students feel about campus life.
“The 2024 number, that’s the last time the SERU was administered, is that 89.1% of students indicate they feel a sense of belonging on campus,” Thul said. “That’s a strong number but I certainly don’t think it represents every student every minute, but it provides a good benchmark of what our students are experiencing.”
Programs like Welcome Week, student employment opportunities and first-year experience classes provide students the opportunity to engage with campus life and other students. Thul said initiatives like these help provide directed support, but having student-led groups helps ensure students are shaping their own experience.
Providing support and framework is not the only way Universities can help students create community. Thul said it is important a student community is intentionally designed.
“The entire student union is a space dedicated for students,” Thul said. “Some of it is small meeting rooms, but much of it is open seating that anyone can use to gather or connect.”
Thul said she views the University as a microcosm of broader societies struggling with isolation.
“The U.S. Surgeon General released a report on the epidemic of loneliness in our country, and they tied it directly to outcomes of physical and mental well-being and how connected we feel to our communities,” Thul said. “I think the university can be a mirror of that.”
Thul said taking steps to solve loneliness requires both institutional and student effort.
“Community is all hands on deck,” Thul said. “That means staff, faculty, every single student needs to be a part of building community.”
A disproportionate effect
Some students are disproportionately affected by loneliness, particularly international and older-aged students, according to Henning-Smith.
“The international students are very resilient and have gone through challenging barriers, but yes, they are going to experience loneliness,” Henning-Smith said. “It’s hard to avoid because of the stress of adapting to a whole new system, a whole new way of life.”
For Ahmed, who moved thousands of miles from her home country, the experience of finding her place on campus has not been easy. She said she feels like she is stuck in the middle.
“It’s either Minnesotans here or people from Wisconsin, or it’s people from other parts of Asia like China or Korea,” Ahmed said. “I’m from Bangladesh, so I haven’t met someone from my country.”
Navigating social relationships while balancing workload and a foreign culture can provide challenging barriers, according to Ahmed.
Like international students, people who come into the University at older ages also have a hard time fitting in on campus.
The Senior Citizens Education program student, Monica Kruger, 62, said returning to school decades after earning her first degree is both exciting and challenging.
“I don’t really feel disconnected,” Kruger said. “But I think there’s part of me that’s always looking through a filter, wondering what people are thinking of me and if they want someone my age to be engaging with them.”
Kruger said that while the University offers many events, a genuine connection does not always happen organically. She said people have a routine of going to class and leaving immediately after, and this habit leads to more isolation unless people actively make a point to do more.
“There are opportunities to make friends, but you have to really put yourself out to find them,” Kruger said.
Programs like the Riverside Lounge dinners offer a rare space where those barriers fall away.
“Meals like this aren’t a surefire way of solving loneliness, but it provides an opportunity,” Kruger said. “When you avail yourself to different opportunities like this, sooner or later, you find the right connections you need.”
Rebuilding their sense of belonging in a youth-dominated environment is a challenge many older adults have to overcome. However, Kruger said once you overcome that barrier, you can start building real connections.
“You could be in a room full of people, but if you don’t have someone that you can share something that matters to you, you’d still be lonely,” Kruger said.
Loneliness is shared
Across multiple generations, identities, countries and disciplines, loneliness persists at the University. Whether it is international students adjusting to a new culture, undergraduates surrounded by thousands yet feeling unseen or senior learners searching for meaningful exchange, the message remains the same: connection takes intention.
“There’s no one way to belong,” Mullaney said. “We need people who start things, people who join and people who just show up.”
Mullaney said loneliness is not entirely negative — it serves as a reminder we need others. He added chronic loneliness becomes dangerous when it stretches on without any relief, and believes the solution is rebuilding the everyday skill of actively reaching out.
“I think things that help people trust each other, things that help people spend time together across lines of differences and identities are what points toward deeper connections,” Mullaney said.
Mullaney said universities could fund people and student-led initiatives to help support people in building communities.
“I don’t want the U to plan my potluck, or I don’t want the state to plot my potlucks either,” Mullaney said. “But I think there’s things that can be done to fund those things that help the happy accidents to happen, and to support folks who want to come together and who want to welcome other people.”
At the Riverside Lounge, the spaghetti bowl empties, laughter fades and people finish up their time together. The participants leave with more than just a good meal. Their shared time together is a small act of resistance against a culture of isolation — serving as a reminder that even in a world built on individualism, belonging can still be made one shared meal at a time.
“Community is rooted in shared time, it’s not shared interest,” Mullaney said. “Community meals offer us an excuse to be able to share time together on purpose.”
