Janice M. McCabe, "Making, Keeping, and Losing Friends: How Campuses Shape College Students’ Networks" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

Summary

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Podcast Summary: New Books Network

Episode: Janice M. McCabe, "Making, Keeping, and Losing Friends: How Campuses Shape College Students’ Networks" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
Date: November 21, 2025
Host: Michael Johnston
Guest: Dr. Janice M. McCabe (Associate Professor of Sociology, Dartmouth College)

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Main Theme and Purpose

This episode features an in-depth discussion with Dr. Janice M. McCabe about her new book, "Making, Keeping, and Losing Friends: How Campuses Shape College Students’ Networks." The conversation explores how campus structures, policies, and social environments influence the formation, maintenance, and dissolution of friendships among college students across various institutional contexts: a large public university, a selective private college, and a community college. The episode also addresses practical implications for students, families, and colleges and opens up avenues for future research.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Origin of the Research

• Dr. McCabe’s prior work examined friendship networks at a large public institution, which raised questions about how friendship dynamics might differ in other college settings (02:01).
• Her move to Dartmouth and teaching experience sparked observations about structural differences impacting student friendships.

2. Friendship Markets: Initial and Secondary

• Friendship markets: The concept refers to time-bound windows when students are open to making friends, notably during orientations or the early weeks of college.
• Initial friendship market: The beginning of college—first few weeks—including orientation, where nearly everyone is open to new connections. “It’s both so essential, crucial, and terrifying to have to make friends so quickly.” (04:12, McCabe)
• Afterward, the market "closes," making the formation of new friendships less frequent.
• Secondary markets: Pop-up opportunities later in college life—club fairs, classes, student organizations—where making friends is possible, but not as easy as in the initial phase (06:29).
• Regret and missed opportunities: Students who immediately attached to the first group regret not branching out during the initial period, as it’s harder to connect later (07:26).

3. Mechanisms: Homophily and Propinquity

• Two main drivers of friendship:
  • Homophily: “Similarity.” People befriend others like themselves.
  • Propinquity: “Encountering the same people repeatedly.” (09:07)
• Both are especially relevant in initial and secondary friendship markets.

4. Meaningful Friendships and Funneling

• Over time, students funnel friendships, growing more selective and focusing on deeper connections.
• True friends are those you “can depend on, trust... not always someone you can tell everything to, but someone who knew more than just surface level stuff” (10:07, McCabe).
  • Quote: “The mark of true friendship is not feeling like you have to be ‘on’... you can just relax.” – Melanie (pseudonym, 10:51, paraphrased by McCabe)
• Social network analysis terms: More central friends (nodes with the most links) tended to be the closest (11:50).

5. Losing Friends: Fading Away vs. Breaking Up

• Dr. McCabe distinguishes between “fading away” and “breaking up”:
  • Fading away: Gradual loss of contact, often ambiguous and more painful if not mutual (12:22).
  • Breaking up: Active, clear ending of a relationship, sometimes after a breach of trust.
  • Both types can be difficult; reconnections are possible, especially after fading away (19:43).
• Friendship Network Types (from prior and current research):
  • Tight knitters: Dense networks where most friends know each other (“ball of yarn”).
  • Compartmentalizers: Distinct friend groups, little overlap (“bow tie”).
  • Samplers: Numerous one-on-one connections, few group ties (“daisy flower”).
• Breakups are hardest for tight knitters because tension between two can affect the whole group (17:53).

6. Campus Contexts: Structure Shapes Friendship

• UNH (large public university): Strong initial friendship market, cohort-based structures, first-year dorms favor tight-knit networks (22:25).
• Manchester Community College: Non-residential; students leave campus after class, leading to more fleeting, “sampler” style friendships (25:00). Age diversity also impacts group formation (27:39).
  • Notably, the community college was the only campus where strangers invited Dr. McCabe to join them socially (29:40).
• Dartmouth College: Intense orientation programs (like “TRIPS”), mandatory first-year dorms, and identity-based programs foster robust initial friendship markets (31:12).
  • Students highly value programs like TRIPS for social integration even when friendships don’t last long-term (34:25).
• Physical space, dorm makeup, club activity, and institutional selectivity all influence network structure and friendship outcomes.

7. Identity and Friendship Formation

• Identity is dynamic; students' salient identities (race, class, religion, etc.) shift over college (36:26).
  • Intersectionality is key: “People aren’t just one dimensional. They have multiple identities that vary in importance over time.” (36:26, McCabe)
• Friendships often form around identity (e.g., first-gen, religion), but can also create tension as deeper differences emerge, particularly around race and class (38:00).
  • Example: Black students at Dartmouth find class background differences complicate shared racial identity (36:26).

8. Policy Implications & Practical Advice

• Every chapter ends with concrete takeaways for students, parents, and colleges (40:04).
  • Most actionable intervention: Invest in clubs, organizations, and classes with regular, collaborative interaction (e.g., group projects, campus activities boards).
  • Propinquity—recurring encounters—facilitates deeper friendships (41:20).
  • Spaces and programs should create natural opportunities for repeated contact (44:04).
  • Physical campus design (common paths, shared stairways) can foster these encounters, but must also address accessibility (45:07).

9. Future Research Directions

• Dr. McCabe advocates for combining:
  • Quantitative analysis: Mapping network snapshots and changes across diverse campuses.
  • Qualitative insights: Deep stories about the meaning and evolution of friendships (47:16).
  • Focused research on diverse populations (neurodivergent students, individuals with disabilities) is needed.
  • Dr. McCabe is beginning the next wave of her study—tracing the same cohort every five years to understand post-college friendship evolution (48:10).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the tension of making friends in college:
  • “It’s both so essential, crucial, and terrifying to have to make friends so quickly.” (04:12, McCabe)
• On friendship depth:
  • “The mark of true friendship is not feeling like you have to be ‘on’... you can just relax.” – Melanie (pseudonym, paraphrased by McCabe, 10:51)
• On losing friends:
  • “Do you mean fading away or do you mean breaking up?” – Austin (pseudonym, 12:22)
• On network types:
  • “Tight knitters... look like a ball of yarn; compartmentalizers... a bow tie; samplers... like a daisy flower.” (14:05, McCabe)
• On identity and intersectionality:
  • “It’s not just one thing, it may be one... but later… there are really important ways that we’re different.” (36:26, McCabe)

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Timeline of Important Segments

• 01:26–02:01 – Introduction to guest and book’s origin
• 03:25–08:37 – Initial and secondary friendship markets
• 09:07–11:59 – Homophily, propinquity, and meaningful friendships
• 12:22–17:53 – Losing friendships: fading away vs. breaking up and network typologies
• 21:51–31:12 – Institutional comparisons: public university, community college, and private college
• 34:05–36:26 – Orientation programs, dorm setups, and their impact
• 36:26–39:26 – Identity, intersectionality, and tension in friendship formation
• 40:00–46:43 – Practical takeaways, campus design, accessibility considerations
• 47:16–49:46 – Future research directions

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Tone & Language

Dr. McCabe and Michael Johnston keep the conversation personal, reflective, and practical, balancing empirical insight with relatable stories and clear sociological concepts. The tone encourages both academic reflection and actionable steps for improving campus life.

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Conclusion

Dr. McCabe’s research offers a nuanced look at friendships in college, showing how institutional structures—from physical spaces to orientation practices to club offerings—profoundly shape students’ social landscapes. The book’s findings have wide-reaching implications, urging institutions to thoughtfully design environments that foster both the ease and depth of student friendships. The episode closes with a look toward future research, emphasizing the importance of combining network analysis with lived experiences to better understand how friendships inform academic and personal success throughout—and beyond—college.

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Transcript

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Welcome to the New Books Network. Hello and welcome. My name is Michael Johnston and this is another episode of New Books in Sociology, a channel on the New Books Network. Today I have Dr. Janice M. McCabe, Associate professor of sociology at Dartmouth, with me to discuss her newest book, Making, Keeping and Losing How Campuses Shape College students networks, published 2025 by the University of Chicago Press. Welcome to the show today.

[A]

Oh, thanks for having me.

[B]

Excellent. Well, Janice, how did you come about writing this book, Making, Keeping and Losing Friends?

[A]

Yeah, I've been interested in friendship for a while. I had a previous book that I wrote that came out in 2016 called Connecting in How Friendship Networks Matter for Academic and Social Success, where I looked at students Friendship Network, a large public institution. And from that I started thinking a lot about what I found might be particular to that institution. So I had network analysis. I'm a social psychologist. I think a lot about the micro aspects of friendship. Earlier in my career and shortly before also the book came out, I made a career move, moving from Florida State University, where I was a faculty member, to Dartmouth College. And there were a lot of things structurally about Dartmouth, which I think we'll get to later in the conversation that I found intriguing for how they could shape friendship, what students were telling me in the classes that I taught. And a lot of students go to community college and we know little socially about what happens in these spaces. And so I started thinking about not just how different aspects of four year colleges, but also two year colleges may shape friendships.

[B]

Yeah, it's an interesting time. And as professors, you're right, we don't see the crooks and crannies of the university. We often spend our times in classrooms and if we see our students off campus, there are times where they don't necessarily want to see us. So yeah, it's interesting. I hangouts myself and I'm curious about the importance of hangouts. So it was such a joy to find this book at such an opportune time. So, yeah, thank you for writing this. And I found it very intriguing. The first thing that I came across in your book is the importance of friendship markets. Could you tell me a bit more about what friendship markets and the importance that they play in making friends?

[A]

Yeah, I think we notice in a kind of general way how quickly students make friends when they first come to college. You know, this process and students, I was struck by how they would tell me how it's both like so essential, crucial and terrifying to have to make friends so quickly. And they do, you know, at Dartmouth in unh. And so this was a term that came from another book called Practice for Life by Lee Cuba and colleagues, who's a sociologist. There's a chapter in there, I believe it's called Connection. And there's just one paragraph about friendship markets. And I remember being really intrigued by that concept as I was reading their book and as I started doing the interviews for this project and observing, I also did some ethnographic observations. I was really struck by how differences in time and space shaped the ability for students to make friendships or not in these spaces. So I developed these terms, what I call the initial friendship market and secondary friendship markets. And so initial friendship markets are what happened at the very beginning of college, that couple week period, also including orientation, if campuses have orientation. And it's a market because there are buyers and sellers, people who are particularly open to making friendships. And then at some point after, after that couple week period, the market kind of closes. And it does so in different ways on different campuses. And then there are later times. The secondary markets are what I call these pop up markets that happen again in different times and places on other campuses where people are more open to making friends. But not as open as the initial friendship market where nearly everyone is open to making friends later on. If it's a secondary market, the majority are open, but they're still some navigation that has to happen.

[B]

Interesting. So like at my campus, most of our students participate in some way, shape or form. They come on campus for football several weeks prior to the campus community really opening up before classes even begin. So the primary friendship market would probably be their dorm mates and the other football players who they come here with and as they bond and start to develop friendships. But if that fails, then the secondary market will open up usually a few weeks later once the campus opens and they go to a classroom and they might find people there, or they might go to an organization fair and have an opportunity to join a fraternity. Or for the females on campus, sororities or for sororities for others who identify as non binary. Am I conceptualizing the friendship market correctly?

[A]

Yeah, that's right. And so those, you know, either formal pre orientation programs or athletes or some other clubs that come on campus also before the regular year starts. And what I found with some of those students is because I interviewed them about halfway through college and then at graduation, so they were reflecting back on their experiences. And I had some students who expressed regrets because they had during that initial friendship market, they had like clung to the first group that they come with. So in the example you gave, you know, it might be the football team and they develop a great sense of community within their football team. So then when the other students come to campus during orientation or even just when they move into the dorms, they feel like they have their group set so they're not as open. And later on they were like, oh, I wish I would have gotten to know the people in my dorm. Recognizing although they don't use that term of the initial friendship market, they recognize it was easier at the very beginning than it was later on.

[B]

Yeah, there's a click set form, but then also the potential for which we'll get to later, but the bonds potentially falling apart. Right. The breakups and friendships and then the number of opportunities that are available, not necessarily just breakup, but also fading away. Right. But the potential for them to then go and find new friends. From the. I use two words, homophily and propaguity for two ways in which increases or decreases the likelihood of a person making friends.

[A]

That's right. Yeah. So I was gonna say the two main drivers of friendship, this is not just from my research, but others are homophily and propinquity. So homophily similarity and propinquity are encountering the same people repeatedly too. So those happen within the friendship markets.

[B]

Yeah, so it could be like the parties that they go to frequently and the people who continue to attend those parties and being able to develop a friendship there from that secondary market. So there's a lot of work involved in keeping and deepening these friendships. It's more than just about meeting these people and being around them. There's a lot that goes into it, including the role of identity shifts and strategy of friendship funneling. Could you tell me more about how these students describe knowing when a friendship has become truly meaningful and how their growing selectivity over time reshapes the overall structure of their networks?

[A]

Yeah. Students were reflecting over time about who were their real friends or their true friends. They would often use that term. The meaningful was more my term, as, you know, as an analyst imposed on them and was often someone they could depend on, someone they could trust. Not always someone they could tell everything to, but someone who knew more than just surface level stuff about them. And that was really important for that sense of being known and a sense of being supported on campus. Melanie, the pseudonym I give for the student who opens up chapter one, mentions that she says the mark of true friendship is not feeling like you have to be on when you're around somebody, you can just relax. So I thought that also captured that sense of what it means to not just be a friend, but to be a meaningful friend.

[B]

You know, I'm talking about social network analysis in my social organization class. And this made me think of network analysis in terms of framing and making sense of. Of what's going on here. And when you talked about friendship funneling, it made me think about different activities for different friendships. Not all friends were shared. So in network analysis, there are nodes and there are links. And I think one of the things that you found was the nodes that had the most links to them or the friends who had the most connections to them in terms of activity, tended to be some of the closest friends for these students.

[A]

Yeah, that's right. That's right. So they were often more central to the network using those network terms of centrality.

[B]

Excellent. And now we get to losing friends. Losing friends is common despite the stigma that is attached to it. What are some of the things that the students found most difficult about losing friends and how to navigate that, and how did that contribute to their greater identity clarity or stronger network support as friends came and went?

[A]

Yeah, so it was actually one of the first participants that I interviewed A Dartmouth student I called Austin, who made this distinction for me between. Because I was asking him about losing friends, and he said something like, do you mean fading away or do you mean breaking up? And I hadn't heard that term. We think about romantic relationships breaking up. And that was a useful distinction throughout. And it wasn't that one of those was more difficult than others. Sometimes students had a hard time with both of those things. You know, the fading away, there can be a lot of ambiguity to it, particularly when it's not mutual. Right. So one of the things about friendship is that it's a chosen relationship. It's mutual. You can use this term friend in a range of ways. And that flexibility can be really great at times, and it can be so challenging to navigate at other times for students. And so the breaking up was an example of having a relationship talk where you have a clear break and you both understand what's happening to the relationship. And that can hurt. That hurt even for students who were the ones who initiated the breakup, because there was some often breach of trust that led to them feeling like they needed to have that hard conversation. And then also, you know, the fading away, the slowly stop talking to each other or not reaching out again if it wasn't mutual, could also lead to hurt feelings and make it feel hard. Another way that that, you know, to answer your question about what was most difficult to navigate, these breakups were particularly hard for students. That I call tight knitters. So gets at the network part, and that's this typology that I developed in my previous book and Connecting in college, where I characterize students and people as being either what I call tight knitters, compartmentalizers, or samplers. And so tight knitters are the kinds of friendships we tend to romanticize as a culture. A lot of TV shows and movies are about these. They look like a ball of yarn if you imagine them in terms of networks where nearly everyone knows each other within the network. And then compartmentalizers look like a bow tie. If they have two groups of friends, they can have three or four groups. And often they do different things with different groups. So you might have my friend from my major, my friends from friends from my major, my friends from my sorority or friends from home, friends from work, friends from my dorm, and organized in that way where people know each other within the groups but not across them. And then the third group are what I call samplers, which look like a daisy flower in network analysis. People have as many friends on average, but their friends don't tend to know each other so they're managing a lot of one on one friendships too.

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[A]

Yeah, that's right. And as you start to go out so these, I'm talking about students, closer friends. But as you start to go out into bigger networks like there was a really fantastic study, there have been a couple of people's Facebook networks and those almost always go into compartmentalized networks as you get bigger. Which makes sense when you think about different foci again to use the network term that people occupy within society but kind of back to the friendship breakups. Breakups were particularly hard for tight knitters because again their friends know each other. So attention with one friend impacts the whole group and you know, some students. So students can lose all of their friends. Those networks can split in really challenging ways.

[B]

Very civilian. Yeah. With the breakup and how new groups are created from Those breakups and splits and, you know, with the funneling, I thought of the fading away kind of being like a ghosting of friendships, of like just separating without telling each other. And I had friendships that faded away from college to career because I just didn't stay in touch with that person afterwards and really didn't have any reason to other than, you know, maybe because we're friends, but we would see each other and we would almost instantly reconnect and rekindle our relationship when we saw each other out and about. But they became far and fewer between.

[A]

That's right, yeah.

[B]

Oh, and I think there's strengths and limitations to both ones. Not that, you know, breaking up is ever easy, but with breakups, there's at least closure to the situation.

[A]

That's right. And both of those, actually, I saw students be able to reconnect later. It was more common with fading away, you know, as you mentioned, particularly when it wasn't intentional, but sometimes just people's lives changed or even, you know, when you think about the rhythms of campus, they're back in a class again together or they're back in a club together. And the reason that they faded away in the first place wasn't really a conscious decision. It was just that no one was making the effort to reach out. And all of a sudden it was harder to maintain that friendship. So when it becomes easier, because the structure makes it easier, people were able to reconnect. And there was also people who reconnected after a friendship breakup. So neither of those things are always forever.

[B]

Yeah, that's interesting. I didn't really see summer being mentioned in the book at all, but summer is an interesting time in college and campus life because it's almost as if it's fading in and fading out of friendships. Every summer going into summer in May, but going out of summer when coming back to campus. Yeah.

[A]

And students talked about those breaks, both summer and even the holiday break between fall and winter or spring terms, about how there they were, making a conscious effort of who to reach out to, knowing that again, if you're living together, you'd be back together in a daily basis when you came back. But is the friendship really worth the effort of reaching out on a weekly or daily basis when you're away from each other? And you can do it both individually and you can do it in a group. So that's an advantage that the tight knitters had or the compartmentalizers. Also, group chats were used quite often where sometimes it was talk, sometimes just throwing a meme. Or a photo in there as a way to stay connected.

[B]

So now we get to the point of comparing these, the private universities at community college and the large state school. And it seemed like that they were each kind of unique from one another, particularly in terms of the physical space, the policies and the institutional culture and how they shaped the student friendships. Which campuses did you find featuring most strongly produced distinctive network types? And were there any particular design elements or institutional practices that either consistently helped or hindered students across all the three settings?

[A]

Yeah, there were. So as you noted, they're both ways that each of the campuses are really distinct. And there's other features that are common in shaping friendships. So back to the network types, the tight knitters, the compartmentalizers, and the samplers. I found so many. My sample, I interviewed 95 students and they weren't drawn in a representative sort of way. So I want to be careful about the way that I'm drawing conclusions. Yet I was struck by both this and in my previous study where I had 72 students at a large public institution. What I found is that at those large public institutions there are, I guess, so backing up. Thinking about the structure of college tends to shape compartmentalized networks in a lot of ways too, because students are moving from group to group, from campus to campus, or from group to group, from class to class on a campus. And yet there are distinct things that make. For example, at unh, there were more tight knit networks than there were on the other campuses. And part of that is they had a really strong initial friendship market. So back to, they had orientation programs. They have a large cohort of students starting classes together as first year students, engaging in activities together. People are really open. And then within those first couple weeks, the networks kind of settle in a lot of ways. And there are some opportunities for secondary markets along the way, but they were less strong than they were particularly for Dartmouth. And so students were more often tight knitters because they more often stayed with that initial group.

[B]

At unh, we're all three campuses, residential campuses, because that was another thing that I thought of with the community college, the one that I attended. There was students who would go onto campus, but then leave the evening hours to go back home to their parents or to their own house off campus. And many of them would also work full time jobs in addition to going to community college just based on the schedule that allowed for them to do so.

[A]

Yeah, no, the Manchester Community College was the community college that I studied and I selected it because it was non residential. It didn't have dorms. It's one of the largest in the state of New Hampshire too. And so, yeah, you definitely identified one of the main drivers of what made or several of the main drivers of what made the community college different was that students were always going off campus in the evenings to sleep somewhere else versus staying on campus, which made it easier to have tight knit friendship networks when you're living together. And at the community college students, most students would only come to campus when they had class too. They weren't coming there just to hang out. Sometimes they would come and hang out in the library or there was a common area the students called the pit, where there were a bunch of couches and a big TV screen and a lot of clubs met there and that was open, I think a lot about the physical spaces of these places. So the community college reminded me of more of a high school and it's set up than the other campuses because most of the things were in one building. So you'd enter, there was a desk where you would either show your ID or I had to write down my name and my license plate number every time I came too. And then the library was to your left. To the right was where this area of the pit was where anyone could sit and study, like I said, on couches. Then near the that, there were a couple pool tables and that opened into the cafeteria too, where people would, you know, sit sometimes in work or you know, be between classes. But I, I can't think of any students that I talked to who like physically came to campus on a day when they didn't have class or you know, very rare were students who would come to class just for a club meeting too, which again, shaped their ability to form deep and lasting friendships. So the community college students were more likely to be samplers than the other.

[B]

Types as a result of propicuity being low, but homophily probably being pretty high in the community college, I would guess.

[A]

I mean, there were a range of different types of. There were some students that were 18 and lived very nearby who came to the community college. And then there were also certainly students who were middle aged who came back to school after. Yeah, after another career or after a divorce or you know, after some big life change too, in that. And so age was a dimension that shaped friendship at the community college in a different way. That would make it harder for students who were older to feel like they could connect in ways.

[B]

Yeah, that's interesting. I walk through the halls and sometimes at the community college I would think they would be Less diverse just because I. And digging into it definitely opens up, as you just shared, opens up the diversity and things that, well, sociologists say, fighting the strange and the familiar. For the people who are living life, it's pretty familiar to them. But somebody walking into us as strange to it might find it quite different than their everyday life.

[A]

That's right. Yeah. And I was struck by. At the community college, friendships were definitely still important to students, but they were more fleeting and it was accepted more that we'll be friends while we're in this class together and then it's likely that we won't, you know, that would just kind of fade away to. And it wasn't as upsetting to them as it was the students at the other campuses too. And they're, you know, at the community college, they didn't have orientation. Right. There weren't these first year dorms that were shaping that initial friendship market. So the initial friendship market was quite weak. Yet there was an openness in those public spaces to approaching people and making friends that was different than I saw on the other campuses and was really quite lovely. It was the only place where when I was sitting, because I would often sit in that space between interviews or just to try to get the feel of what it was like to be a student there. And both students and staff, both people that I had met before and just complete strangers, would invite me to come to sit with them and have lunch together, would ask me to play pool, would come and talk to me. And that never happened at UNH or at Dartmouth too.

[B]

Oh, and I even think about admissions processes and who's invited in and the strictness of the gatekeeper in terms of who gets into Dartmouth or who gets into UNH or who gets into mcc.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Both the selectivity of those institutions matters as well as just also with mcc because you have to also show and you have to sign in to come in. There's a sense that you're really part of the community too in that way.

[B]

And you probably find almost anybody walking on the campuses of Dartmouth or UNH on an average day. And it might be a student or it might just be a community member walking through campus. Or at least that's been my experience with the college campus here at Mike and.

[A]

That's right. Or a prospective student in their family. Yeah. Oh, and I didn't talk about Dartmouth as being the third comparison in this. And the structures that shape friendships too. That Dartmouth has a really large outdoor orientation program that's called TRIPS that I believe almost 90% of students at the time that I did my research participated in. You'd spend a few nights in the wilderness with a small group of people and really get to know each other well. And that happens before a week of orientation. That happens on campus. And then all students are required to live in dorms. And nearly all of those are specific for first year students. So they have a series of these really intense initial friendship markets that students are participating in. And there's also other identity based orientation programs like one for first gen low income students and one for international students at Dartmouth. That again, are these really strong friendship markets where students are not just getting a sense of the campus and the academic expectations here, but also really getting to know each other and developing friendship types.

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That's why you rack. That was one of my favorite parts to read. It was all the rave. Like all those different programs, you couldn't have told the students what to think of it. You asked them and it seemed like that they were very, very. They made it a priority to pick up on trips and talk about how great it was to be able to develop friendships through that.

[A]

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Even if those friendships weren't the lasting ones that were their most important friendships later on, they really set the groundwork for them to be able to experience what college was like and to be successful here. So the dorms just for first year students also were really important. It was something I didn't think that closely about until I went to UNH also. And students there had the option to either live in first year dorms or live in mixed year dorms. And like I first thought, oh, like how neat that you could live in these mixed year dorms and get to know people across all, you know, years. But what I found, what students told me is that the students in those mixed year dorms had already been at UNH for a while, already had their friendships set. And so they weren't open to making friends with the first year students that were so eager. So it didn't operate in a friendship market in the way that first year dorms did or the way those students who were really excited to get to meet upperclassmen had expected.

[B]

Yeah. So with that you kind of bring up this topic of individual identities and how identities are important in establishing friendship groups and how that identity isn't something that's static from your one all the way to year four. It's something that's ever transforming along with the friendship groups that exist within the networks along with the shifting of the identities. What were some of the identity based tensions that occurred as a result of the identities and the cross cutting friendships based on the identities of these students, be it race, class, gender, sexuality or academic pathways Ways.

[A]

Yeah, I went in thinking, because as sociologists we think about those range of identities and trying to think what does a student's racial identity, what impact does it have on their networks? And of course there's been a lot of theorizing about intersectionality and you could really see it at play here. People aren't just one dimensional identities, but instead have multiple identities that are intersectional and that vary in salience or importance over time. So it's not just one thing, it may be one. There were certainly students who early on in their experience found, for example, that first gen orientation program that I was talking about where they found their class identity to be really important in shaping their friends, friends. And then later in college, you know, maybe it was more their, you know, religious identity, being part of the Christian Union campus group, for example, or I had interviewed a couple students at Dartmouth who worked at this cafe that a lot of students of color worked at also. So it wasn't just clubs, sometimes it was workplaces. And in there it was both kind of a racial identity and you know, an income based identity that brought people together. So those are some of the things that bring people together. But as you brought up in your question, there are certainly tensions as well. So sometimes students would bond based on a common identity and then find that, oh, we thought because of that identity that we would share the same values and the same worldview. But really like, oh, once we dig deeper, there are really important ways that were different. So it can feel like someone is ignoring another part of your identity. Like, for example, black students on Dartmouth's campus are quite diverse in terms of class background. And so sometimes they would think that they shared a lot based on that racial identity, which they do. But yet it also can hide the many different in class background and even just like, can we afford to go to dinner in town rather than in the dining hall? And you know, how comfortable am I in this friendship to be able to talk about this with my friend, to be able to let them know, you know, am I going to say, oh, I can't really afford to do that? Or am I going to say, oh, I'm just busy tonight.

[B]

Yeah, and not being able to necessarily understand or fathom the things that one another are going through. Yeah, that makes sense. So one of the things that you concluded with in the final chapters of this book are practical and policy oriented implications that could be made based on the findings from the research that you conducted. If institutions were to implement one concrete intervention to improve student friendship formation and maintenance, what would you prioritize? Guys?

[A]

Yeah, one thing is kind of.

[B]

A.

[A]

Hard question, but I can come up with one. First, I'll say that I've thought a lot about how to make this research practical. So the end of every chapter of this book has takeaways for students, for their parents, and for colleges. So that relates to thinking about the joys and challenges of making friends, keeping friends, losing friends. So I offer quite a bit of advice in the book and then the last chapter zeroes in on a few of these as well. Things that are really, I hope, concrete and actionable for institutions and for students at the more micro level of things. And I think where I would go is making sure that students have a range of ways to connect with others, but not just one way to say that is making sure to support clubs and organizations. And while that's true, I also recognize that institutions have constraints about resources and they can't just always have more and More so I found that clubs, organizations, classes that had a couple of features were particularly powerful in creating meaningful friendships. So I would encourage institutions to invest in spaces. Again, clubs and classes where people regularly interact and work together. Like on group projects. You can do group projects in class, you can do group projects in clubs. So at both UNH and at Manchester Community College, students that I interviewed both talked about something like. They called it a campus activities board. And how those organizations, because you were planning like an event together, were really powerful ways in bringing groups of people together. They had to meet a lot, they had to exchange phone numbers. And then they were doing lots of planning before the event, which helped them get to know each other both during the official planning and in the quiet spaces of planning. And then part of their expectations were to go of these things together too. So whether it be a concert or whether it be a fall harvest celebration on campus, this propinquity, encountering the same people over and over and working on something together really mattered.

[B]

Yeah, that was interesting. I was telling some students the other day, who were some prospective students, about how some of the most successful students on campus. It's strange, you would think that the more busier they are, the more they struggle to get things done. But it seems like the students who are having the most success are those who are most plugged into campus and have the most things going on. Their mind doesn't have an opportunity to drift and think about things that they could be doing instead of going to college. And I think maybe our college is doing some of these things right. Like having teammates have brother and sister teams that they bond with on campus and they do things for, or the fraternities and sororities or I'm not sure that we still have them. But at one point we had not only residential assistants who monitored the hallways and made certain that answers were provided to any questions that the people in the dorms nearby had, but also community assistants who would create games and activities in the evening hours when faculty members are off campus and many of the staff members are also gone, so that the students still have something to plug into and do on campus. Like yard games and things like. Like that.

[A]

Yeah, that's right. And when they happen in spaces where people are normally encountering each other anyway, then you have that benefit of propinquity which I gave quite a few stories about in my book too. You know, like Grace, for example, who complimented a girl on her shorts on the first day of class. And then they had a room that was beside each other. So this really simple exchange that they had had because they saw each other in a regular way led to this deeper friendship. And sometimes it was also. These friendships were also born out of activities that you mentioned, too, either in the dorms or in a club. You know, going to things, just seeing people. You know, the first time you pass by and you notice someone has, like, a sticker on their water bottle, that's something that you like. You know, you may just kind of notice it in passing. Maybe the next time you comment on the next time you have a deeper conversation about it and a friendship is created from there.

[B]

Yeah, the vision that I had in my head with the I like your shorts was like, oh, just trying to put my foot in the shoes that she was wearing is. Oh, my goodness. Did I just say something really silly? Or where is this going to go from here? Is that person gonna think that I asked, made a really dumb comment, or is this going to turn into a friendship? And then all of a sudden, by chance, it almost seemed that they continue to see each other and continue to be in a lot of similar activities, which perpetuity, opens up an opportunity for a deeper friendship.

[A]

Yeah, it does. And so campus architects think about that flow of campus a lot. I've spoken to some as I've been writing this book and as it's come out too. And just thinking about how they funnel people on common sidewalks on campus to think about increasing the chances of passing each other. Or if people share a stairwell in a building, they're more likely, again, to have these organic conversations than they are than if they have more stairways that take people in separate directions too. So these things that we may take for granted that seem inconsequential actually can shape relationships and can create lasting friendships as well.

[B]

And then accessibility. I mean, there's a whole other area of disability studies there with who has. Has access to these spaces and who's coming into these common spaces based on their ability alone.

[A]

That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So not just stairwells, but. Right. Where are the main doors? Are the main doors accessible? Or do you have to go in this, like, side door that, you know, takes you away from the flow of the action?

[B]

Are there just stairs or is there a ramp, too? Right, Something like that.

[A]

Yeah, certainly.

[B]

And then theoretically, where do you see the study of student friendship networks needing to go next, beyond your study? Where should scholars who are interested in this topic continue on? Or where might you go?

[A]

Yeah, I think there's so much potential and potential both for quantitative network analysis in understanding in representative samples at a wide range of campuses, what students friendships look like both as snapshots and over time. Because in my work I've identified some features of campuses that matter. But I think by taking again larger, more representative samples, we can better understand this and make our college campuses even more amenable to friendships and to meaningful friendships. And also I think there's a lot of potential and in more mixed methods research like I do also. So I love pairing the quantitative networks like the visuals, the sociograms with speaking with students so you understand the meaning that those ties and nodes have for students in their lives too. So gathering students stories, really trying to understand the texture of their experience, what really mean matters for them. I think there's a lot more that we can do to understand pieces of that also for different groups like you had mentioned, ability so neurodivergent individuals, other disabilities as well I think could be really powerful areas for researchers to better understand and improve. Improve people's friendships and people's college experiences and the success that they're able to achieve both academically and socially. And then for myself, I'm continuing to interview the people in this book and my plan is to interview them every five years. And I'm just at the beginning of the next wave here and will write write a book about friendships. After college is my plan to understand how the patterns that students have during college and the specific relationships that students form during college will matter when they've been several years away from college.

[B]

Yeah. As identities continue to develop and continue to harden and understanding the new. Well, the dynamicism of the relationship when a person goes on to career or goes into a whole different area of the country and have to have these long distant relationships. I have a sister in law who went to vet school and she stayed home but many of her friends moved out to New York or other states where they practice veterinary science. But they still come together at homecoming and they still have their conversations over the phone. But yeah, I'm guessing that probably won't happen for everybody.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. So I'm curious. Yeah. What people does that happen for and what are some things that happen during in college that maybe help support that?

[B]

Well, thank you for your time today. I'm all out of questions, but I do have one more for you and that is well beyond this next book and the collecting of data. Are there any other things that you're working on these days? Any other projects or topics?

[A]

Yeah, I'm definitely working on some other topics. I do research on gender and children's books also. And so I've been looking at the the Caldecott Witcher Picture Books Award winning picture books to see the representations of gender and race in those books, particularly over the last 25 years. Because I had another paper that looked at that from the award's inception and I believe it was 1938 to 2000 to see what's happened since 2000 in that. And I'm interested in young people and their identities in arranging of ways. So I'm also working with a collaborator on a project on Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts and kids experiences and leaders experiences of that and their views of citizenship.

[B]

They all come together. It's like research all comes together under similar topics but each having their own unique attributes of the project. So I look forward to to reading more of your stuff and definitely once you get this next book about friendships after college, I would love to have you back on the show.

[A]

Oh, I'd love to join you again. Thank you, Michael.

[B]

All right. Well, thank you everyone for listening. This is another episode of New Books in Sociology, a channel on the New Books Network. Have a great day.