On October 29, 2025, Bishop’s Lounge came to life under twinkling lights as dozens of students clad in blue jeans and matching lavender t-shirts served pasta, breadsticks, and homemade desserts to an ever-growing crowd of hungry students. The hall was decked with blue and gold balloons, colorful fabric garlands, and a hand-painted banner featuring the words “Xiti with the Xis” in bubbly blue letters.

The mouth-watering smells of pesto, chicken, and cheese filled the air as students found their seats and dug into their meals at the long tables covered in gingham cloth filling the room. Xiti with the Xis, the annual pasta-selling event hosted by Southwestern’s Theta Lambda chapter of Alpha Xi Delta, allows students to indulge in all-you-can-eat pasta with the choice of six sauces: marinara, creamy tomato, alfredo, pesto, butter garlic, or bolognese; the $5 entry charge also provides access to unlimited tea, lemonade, fruit, breadsticks, and assorted sweets. Even better, all proceeds from the event were donated to Stand Up For Kids, an organization dedicated to ending the cycle of youth homelessness and supporting kids in the foster care system across the country. 

More than delicious food and money well-spent, this event felt like an ode to campus community and public student involvement. Friends laughed and talked over a good meal; sorority sisters darted through the crowds,  greeting people they knew and cheerfully striking up a chat with newcomers; anyone sitting alone soon found themselves welcomed into a conversation and engaged in lively discussion. The members of AXiD, who had spent hours planning, shopping, cooking, and decorating in the days leading up to the event, radiated a lively and energetic mood that only served to heighten the atmosphere of good vibes and high spirits. 

As enjoyable as the event was, it served as somewhat of a reminder about an ongoing problem here at Southwestern, and at universities across the country: why did this event feel like such an outlier? Why did it feel so special and out of the ordinary to arrive at a school-sponsored gathering to find it full of students actively engaging with one another? 

All semester, it seems that club membership, attendance at school-sponsored events, and even student concentrations in on-campus third spaces like The Cove have been at an all-time low. This problem isn’t unique to SU: across the country, student life seems to have been made unrecognizable by the Covid-19 pandemic, with several metrics of student engagement (including “time spent engaging in community service opportunities,” “time spent participating in student organizations,” and “time spent helping classmates”) showing a noticeable decline from 2013 to 2023, according to this study. Furthermore, changes to student life here at SU (such as the end of the MOSAIC program, tighter funding for many clubs and organizations, and unpopular renovations of student spaces like The Cove and the Mood-Bridwell lounges) also seem to put a strain on student involvement. If you want to learn more about this topic, check out our article on the student loneliness crisis.

So, now that I’ve laid out all of this doom and gloom about the student engagement crisis and the seeming lack of interest in school events and large-scale gatherings, what exactly can we do? The situation is far from hopeless, although the remedies might be a little uncomfortable: it may seem cliché, but forcing yourself out of your comfort zone to join orgs, seek leadership positions, and meet new people is a vital step towards community growth and personal fulfillment. Show up to a meeting of a service organization like Alpha Phi Omega, find community with Pirates 4 Pride, expand your mind with SU Philosophers, do your part at helping the environment with the Community Garden Team, Bee-Co, or SU Environmentalists; if you feel up to it, rushing a frat or sorority can be a fulfilling way to find a support system and meet loads of new people on campus. All of these organizations rely on membership and participation; if no one shows up to meetings or events, they will simply cease to exist, and this dip in engagement will spiral out of control – but we as a community can make sure that doesn’t happen! 

Beyond membership in organizations, bringing complaints and plans to the university is of the utmost importance during transitional states like the one we seem to be in right now. We as the student body have the power and the right to choose what we want our campus community to feel like; the re-emergence of student-led spaces in the same vein as the Korouva Milkbar and the Black Room is entirely possible, although it may be an uphill battle.

So: where do we go from here, and how does it all link back to a sorority-sponsored pasta event? Again and again I find myself disappointed by the student turnout at school events, and I know that I’m not the only one. To see such a crowd in Bishop’s Lounge all gathered together to laugh, eat, and support a good cause felt incredibly hopeful – it felt like a glimpse into what our campus could be, what it almost is.

So go out! Meet new people! If you can’t get your friends to do things with you, go alone! If you can’t find events that pique your interest, plan your own! We are all living our one and only undergrad experience – we should make the most out of it, enjoy it, sink our teeth into it like a delicious plate of homemade pasta.