Massey College, at the University of Toronto, is an important example of Canadian efforts to emulate the ‘OxBridge’ educational and college system at Oxford and Cambridge. I was pleased to join Massey as a junior fellow when I began my PhD in 2012, and found the college to be an indispensable social hub amid U of T’s general coldness. I was a resident during term time over three years but, for the rest of my PhD, still visited routinely to read, have lunch, or just see who was around. It used to be that any time I was passing the college I could drop in for a few minutes and have about a 1/3 chance of having a really interesting conversation, often with a stranger.
As with everything else, the COVID-19 pandemic locked down Massey College to residents only, staring nervously at each other through plastic dividers. Unfortunately, and as with many other pandemic disruptions, some important changes have carried through to the present. It used to be that at most times someone would care to go, such as evenings and weekend days, there would always be someone on duty in the porter’s lodge at Massey College. The gate would be open, and they would greet anyone who happened to turn up. Now the college is controlled by keyfobs and security cameras. Except for during business hours, there is usually nobody in the porter’s lodge. Instead of a gateway to a social community, the front gate is an impassable cage of metal that admits only key-bearing residents. Consequently the college is darker, emptier, and of less use.
I feel this has had an immense cost for the community, and a cost deeply linked to Massey’s purpose. Like Oxford and Cambridge colleges, it brings people together across scholarly domains. This helps them build relationships not excessively bound up in the competitiveness of those in the same field. It also fosters interdisciplinary collaboration. But, for such cross-community enrichment to take place, there needs to be a norm of community participation in college life, ideally extending beyond the set-piece events which the porter’s lodge will now be staffed for.
It often seems that the profoundest effect of the pandemic was to push people into smaller social circles. Friends who used to be at a particular event 10% or 20% of the time are now there never. Events that brought in 50 people bring in 20 or don’t happen at all. It’s like people had their pool of social energy diminished, and so chose to divvy it out among fewer people. In that context, the loss of accessible third spaces like Massey College outside of business hours is deeply felt. The closed gate in your face feels less like a pragmatic money-saving choice and more as a manifestation of a world where we have de-prioritized community.
