August 22, 2003

Welcome to college,

College is a great place. A lot of very good things happen at college and that’s what most of us have heard about and expect to find once we get here. But there are also some very difficult things about college — things we don’t often hear about until we arrive. The fact is college is a miserable experience for an awful lot of people a significant part of the time. Keep your eyes open and you’ll see it — very soon and very close:

It’s a weeknight. I’m in my dorm room, working on my calc homework. As I walk down the hallway to get a snack, I notice one of the guys down the hall is sitting in his room alone with a bottle of Southern Comfort. As I pass by the room a couple times later that night, I notice that the Southern Comfort is fast disappearing as the night goes on. The guy is still alone. Near the end of the night I go by his room once more. The door is closed now, but the sound of a guy vomiting violently pierces the lonely silence of the hallway.

- Notre Dame Junior

I was at a mandatory meeting about healthy relationships in the spring of my freshman year. We had just watched a video about gender relations, and now we were splitting into smaller groups for a discussion. After we sat down, the leader of the discussion asked us where we had found most of our deepest friendships at Notre Dame. As we went around the room, some people said that they had found friends in their dorms, on sports teams, or in clubs they were involved with. Then one kid spoke up and confessed that he’d made no deep friendships in the past year. He said he thought that 90% of freshmen at ND were very lonely and didn’t have any real friendships. I looked around the circle and noticed that almost everyone in the room was nodding their heads in agreement.

- Notre Dame Junior

Last January, on the Thursday night when the police raided Boat Club, I came to a Campus Fellowship meeting for the first time. A sophomore in Fellowship greeted me warmly, made me feel welcome, and invited me to come on the Fellowship Seminar that weekend. Later that night, my roommate and her friends woke me up when they came back from Boat Club. My roommate threw up once as soon as she got to the room, and then threw up five more times during the night. By the morning, there was a pile of dirty pillows, sheets and linens that filled our room with a foul smell. That afternoon, I left for the Fellowship Seminar. The weekend deeply affected my life and introduced me to happiness I hadn’t found anywhere else at Notre Dame. It was the best thing that happened to me last year.

- Notre Dame Sophomore

Why tell these stories? Because they are all true. There are people dying all around us. People who suffer from loneliness, sorrow and despair. People who cannot find real friendship. You’ll see it in the next few weeks, if you haven’t seen it already. It’s terrible. Our college lives are a mess.

But there’s an answer. God has not abandoned this world that he created. He has sent his son — is still sending him — to rescue it, here and now. The Father is pouring out his Holy Spirit. He is giving his life and his power — life and power to free college students from addictions and abusive relationships, to heal them of their diseases and to invite them into a life of freedom in the Spirit, purpose in Christ and love in the Father!

What does that look like? It looks like us. It looks like Campus Fellowship. We are about providing people with the freedom, love and baptism in the Holy Spirit that are God’s answer to the killing influences of loneliness and despair on our campuses. Come, see it for yourself. Join us. Join the revolution.