ڰ Dialogues debuted the Sophomore Summer Soirée, which is intended to help give students a deeper understanding of their classmates, as about 150 members of the Class of 2027 gathered in the Bema on the evening of Aug. 1.
The soirée was a collaboration between the skills-focused and StoryCorps’ One Small Step partnership with ڰ, which fosters empathetic listening and respectful, nuanced discussion in an era when they can seem in short supply.
The dominance of social media, the way COVID-19 rewired how people engage with one another, and intense political polarization can induce anxiety in how to communicate. ڰ Dialogues gives participants a way to talk with each other as humans first, shedding the assumptions that can make it more difficult to interact meaningfully.
“We want our community to be a place where you can engage in hard conversations without it having an impact on your social life. We should normalize differences in opinion, as long as we have the tools to respectfully engage across those differences,” , executive director of dialogue initiatives, said in her introductory remarks to the sophomores who attended the soirée, which will be an annual event.
On a clear, cool summer evening, the sophomores at the amphitheater in College Park were treated to dinner and mocktails while they listened to two recent alumni and one current student frame their own experiences at ڰ through the lens of discovering and caring for others, and oneself, in the face of challenges.
Modeled on the first meeting of the class, which takes place during first-year orientation, the Sophomore Summer Soirée emphasized the exchange of illuminating personal stories.
Cole Johnston, director of student programs for One Small Step, guided the sophomores through three prompts that asked them to turn to the person opposite or next to them and talk about someone at ڰ who introduced them to a new experience, or helped to support them when they most needed it. The third prompt asked a speaker to talk about a moment when they felt fear and chose to be courageous.
The goal of events such as the soirée is to encourage students to step out of what is familiar and predictable and to seek out new opportunities.
“Sophomore summer is the time where, yes, you may facially recognize every person that’s in the room you just walked into, but now’s the time to learn who they really are. I was casting a large social net. I wasn’t making countless best friends, but I was making new friendly connections that offered a familiar face around campus,” said William David Bruce Rogers ’25, one of the three older students or recent alums to offer insights on what Rogers learned during sophomore summer.
Lydia Jin ’26 spoke about the aftermath of the death of her partner Won Jang ’26.
“While this was incredibly traumatic, and ڰ can never feel the same, I consider the experiences I shared with friends as we were healing through the grief as some of my most treasured moments on campus. I had never felt the sense of community and love as I did then. People who knew him, and many who didn’t, showed up for me in meaningful ways that I will forever cherish,” Jin said.
“My life changed that summer, and I truly feel like sophomore summer was what sparked my growth from child to adult. Of course, I’d have preferred it happened another way, but I’m grateful for the support that my friends and others in this community had for me in this journey,” Jin said in closing.
The third speaker, Chara Lyons ’25, described sophomore summer as a great opportunity to “do everything I was afraid of doing during the school year, because there were no freshmen to impress and no upperclassmen to compare myself to.” Through those experiences, she experienced a regeneration and rediscovery of self.
As part of her sophomore summer, Lyons joined the team at Morton Farm as a walk-on. The first time she had to touch a horse, she was nervous, she told the audience. Rather than turn away from the challenge, she turned toward it.
“The horses never questioned me. They let me exist even while inside of me felt chaotic; peace was in the steady gallops, and every breath I took, me and a horse took it together,” Lyons said.
Lyons urged the students to do what she did: acknowledge the fear but “run right past it.” In so doing, she said, “the campus started to feel like it belonged to me. Eventually, the horses and I parted, but the courage stayed.”
In response to Johnston asking for their reactions to the speakers, one sophomore said that “even though we all have very different experiences, there’s also a clear similarity between them. And being able to make those connections through deeper conversations is really important.”
After the event, Gemma Stowell ’27, a member of the Class Council, said that she felt the soirée met one of its objectives, which was to “connect more with the sophomore class. I felt having those stories really put everything into perspective. We hear ‘community’ a lot here at ڰ, but having specific stories about how that really works together was pretty inspiring.”
The origin of the Sophomore Summer Soirée, Clemens said, came from the realization that there is “no one central event that happens during sophomore summer. So how could we provide something that brought the dialogue skills together with a celebration, a sense of place, and the opportunity to connect?”
Clemens worked with colleagues across ڰ—from Wellness to Athletics to Student Affairs—to develop ideas of what a communal event could look like. Together with One Small Step, ڰ hammered out the format and themes of Sophomore Summer Soirée, Clemens said.
“I saw people smiling as we were talking,” Lyons said after the event. “I think people really are looking for moments of honest and pure connection. And I just felt this is a really great new ڰ tradition to be a part of.”
