Out of Hunter’s nearly 23,000 students, 75 percent graduate debt-free. With the rising costs of, well, just about everything lately, this is a stunning statistic that is sure to give many students peace of mind as they enter the post-graduate workforce. This being said, many Hunter students would surely tell you that these benefits come with a catch.
In 2019, Hunter was placed on US News & World Report’s ‘Most Campus Commuters’ list, which stated that 98 percent of the school’s then 16,000 students commuted to campus, with only about 1,000 students living on campus. Attending a commuter school, though very cost and location-efficient, brings about its own slew of challenges, including one of the most important aspects of college life: socializing.
It’s not uncommon for students to rush to class and head straight home afterward, especially those balancing long commutes, jobs, or family responsibilities. As a result, campus life at Hunter can often feel fleeting, come in, learn, leave. Hunter is home to a great deal of wonderful clubs and student-led organizations that work hard to foster community through club fairs, cultural events, and group activities. But for some students, one of Hunter’s other benefits is its flexible class schedules, which means that external responsibilities can limit their availability to attend.
In my case, I’ve fit nearly all of these descriptions throughout my years at Hunter. Despite two amazing years living at Hunter’s former 92nd street dorms, I also work in addition to attending classes and have very limited time on campus. This has made time constraints for clubs and other campus activities limited, as many of my classes take place in the evening. I met some of my closest friends while living at 92Y, but the experiences had there, cooking together in the communal kitchen, studying in each other’s rooms, and hanging out in the common spaces, aren’t necessarily experiences that are easy to replicate on Hunter’s campus when limited time (and Hunter’s limited common areas) is a factor.
So, is there a solution? Prior to the spring semester of my sophomore year, I would have told you I wasn’t quite sure. But it was then that I enrolled in the class “Studio Television Production,” having no inkling of what it would be like. I pictured Hunter’s standard lecture rooms and a PowerPoint on the history of television production. The latter would have been interesting, but it was nothing compared to what I experienced on even my first day in the class. I walked into Hunter’s TV studio on the fourth floor, a room that I didn’t even know existed previously, and spent my first day of the class in a group of four conducting what our professor taught us was a lighting test. The flood lights that illuminate each shot in the studio lived all the way on top of the already high ceiling, so the test involved a ladder. One person stood at the top, one in the middle, and two on the floor to maneuver the moving ladder in order for the person at the top to alter the light. The exercise itself seems like a metaphor for social interaction, and this class was only the beginning.
Throughout the semester, our Professor Peter Jackson implemented weeks of real-world tests, lessons and interactions in which each student would have a specific job that changed each week. So much social interaction and group work caused the class to naturally become close, which resulted in us all developing a tradition of having a post-class happy hour at Bedford Falls down the street after class each week. The tradition became one of my favorite experiences in college, and I knew that it was entirely possible due to the teamwork and wonderful interaction that our class allowed us to have.
Not every class needs a full-blown studio setup or moving ladders to create connection, but the social learning built into that course was something I hadn’t felt before at Hunter. It made me wonder: why aren’t more classes structured like this? In a commuter school where time and physical presence are limited resources, the classroom might be the most reliable place for students to build relationships.
Lecture halls have their place, so many professors are absolutely brilliant, and the material is rich. But when students are expected to come in, sit quietly, and leave without ever learning each other’s names, it reinforces the already isolating nature of commuter life. Group-based classes, project-driven curriculums, and hands-on learning environments not only improve engagement, they give students the space to connect naturally, without needing to carve out extra hours they may not have.
In some cases, it can start with something as simple as the physical layout of a course. I felt this same sense of community in a class I took last semester with Professor Frances Alswang, in which the goal of the class was to develop and pitch a documentary and learn all about the pre-production process. Each day, the class conversed on different ideas and logistics of their production, and the concept of the course, development, made for an explosion of new ideas and conversations.
These types of classes shouldn’t be the exception. Departments across the board could benefit from rethinking how students engage with each other during class time. Interactive, collaborative work helps people learn better, feel less alone, and develop stronger bonds with both the material and their peers. In a school where so many of us are juggling competing priorities, why not make community-building part of the academic structure itself?
The truth is, the traditional social infrastructure that many colleges rely on, dorm life, student centers, common areas bustling with people at all hours, isn’t the norm at Hunter. And that’s okay. The college is still providing an invaluable education at an incredibly accessible cost. But to truly support students beyond the classroom, we have to reimagine what “community” looks like for a population that can’t always stay after hours.
For me, Studio TV Production was the reminder I needed that connection at Hunter is possible, it just takes the right idea.
