St. Lawrence University is an incredible, and unmatched place…we all know that. As freshman, we are introduced to the campus, the people, and everything the school has to offer, and most of us (myself included) immediately fall in love. As the years go on, SLU becomes our new home, and when it’s time to graduate, seniors often feel immense sadness and nostalgia (or at least I’ve been told!). One integral part of SLU culture is their alumni connections. As we all know, this past weekend was Parent’s Weekend and the campus filled with alumni reminiscing their days here on campus with great fondness. I am only in the first month of my freshman year here at SLU, and I already think it’s a very special place. However, I wanted to find out why so many others think the same. In writing this article, I got to experience the faces of students and alumni light up as they recounted the individual moments when each of them knew they were in love with this school. I first asked my good friend Laura Edson (’20), who told me that SLU found its way to her heart through her stomach. “Before I was even a student here, I took a tour and got a pub cookie after. That was the moment I knew I loved it here.” One of my other friends, who wishes to remain anonymous for this quote, said she fell in love on move in day, “there were four ridiculously hot OL’s outside my dorm when I got here. They helped me carry all my stuff up to my room and I knew I would be happy here.”
Mary Santos (’19), hosted me during my overnight before I came to SLU, and is a perfect example of the type of people that make SLU such a wonderful place. She told me that she knew she was in love with SLU on the first warm spring day last year. “Everyone was outside and campus was just alive. I rode my bike around with my speaker in the basket all day and my friends and I had a barbecue that night.” My fabulous orientation leader, Olivia Hess (’18) recalled the day she took her tour here. “I initially really really didn’t want to come to St. Lawrence because I knew a lot of people here and I didn’t want to feel like I was constantly being babysat. So I came thinking that I would just do my visit, spend some time with my cousin, and leave to continue my college search. The day I toured was absolutely terrible weather-wise, and it was kind of miserable. But I took my tour, and as it went on, I wasn’t really bothered by the rainy day. By the end of my tour, I had completely forgotten about my previous mood toward St. Lawrence!”
I had the pleasure of talking to my roommate’s parents, Meg and Colin O’Neill, who met at St. Lawrence and graduated in 1988. SLU has had an incredibly special place in their hearts and as well as their family’s hearts as their daughter is now attending as well. “Freshman year walking back from Augsbury after soccer practice. It was a crisp autumn day…there’s nothing more beautiful than St. Lawrence in the fall. I fell in love,” Colin told me. Meg said that for her, “it was the first day, when my parents dropped me off, and I was eating at Eben Holden and looking out the windows to see a full rainbow. And then again, living at 3 University Avenue and playing touch football on the lawn with my friends while it snowed…wasting time before we went to a football game. It was a quintessential Saturday at college.” The extreme level of impact that SLU has on its students was quite apparent after talking to them. Even 26 years later they still remembered these moments as if they were yesterday.
Eliza Oliver (’19) summed it all up perfectly, when she told me that there wasn’t a specific moment for her, but it was the little things that made her fall in love with SLU. “I love how everyone holds the door open for you and says please and thank you. I love how there is such a sense of trust and how safe I feel being here. I never think twice about walking by myself or leaving my belongings anywhere. I love how helpful everyone is and how people really genuinely want to help to make us all have incredible experiences. I love that, on our little campus, we have the strongest community that does whatever it needs to do to make sure that every single student has the best possible experience they can here. I’ve never felt like I’m going at it alone on this campus and I think that’s why I love it the most here.”