First years find community in a group chat, with room for 5000 people

With their classmates scattered across the country this semester, first-year students at UNC are making friends in unconventional ways. 

LoopChat, a messaging app that allows as many as 5,000 people per group chat, is one way the class of 2024 has been able to stay connected. 

The UNC-CH Class of 2024 LoopChat has nearly 850 members and has been active since the beginning of the summer. For many first-year students, the chat allows them to get to know their peers despite not physically being on campus.

“It’s been a good way to virtually meet people,” said Carly Rauch, a first-year who has been a member of the LoopChat since it had only 30 members. “You can’t just go out to campus or go to the library and meet people. It’s a good way for people to be connected, even when we’re everywhere.”

First-year Abi Barbu has found commonalities with many of the people she met through the chat.

“We jokingly argued about which side of campus was better, talked about scheduling and even bonded over similar interests,” she said.

Kashish Juneja, a junior at the University of California at Berkeley who helped to create the app, said LoopChat has the capacity for 5,000-person group chats to help facilitate these connections. She said the LoopChat team was motivated to expand the project by students’ desire to meet new people — and it's now available at 80 colleges and universities.

Juneja said the app is by and for students, and that the LoopChat team had common student concerns in mind when they created it. 

“When you're on Zoom or when you're on Skype or WebEx or any other virtual platform, or you’re doing school or an internship, you just see people on a screen,” Juneja said. “Once that call ends, that's done. There's no conversation after. But these group chats, they're real time, and they make these connections real. They actually create a connection that goes off the screen.”

Besides the size capability, Juneja said another unique quality of LoopChat is its emphasis on user privacy.

“On things like Facebook or Instagram, for example, you have to give away part of your personal identity or your data,” she said. “This app is completely about your privacy. It's easy to join a group chat or chat with anyone without giving away your personal information.”

Carly Rauch, who is living in an off-campus apartment this semester, said students have also found the chat helpful as a source of information about on-campus happenings.

“That’s actually how I first found out that kids were being sent home,” she said. “It was through that chat.”

JD Hopper, a first-year student who lived in Craige Residence Hall before students were sent home, said it can be hard to have personal conversations with so many people in the chat — especially while being bombarded with hundreds of messages a day. But he said that, like Rauch, he has found it useful for getting information.

“It’s definitely a good place to ask questions if you’re not clear about something,” Hopper said. “I remember, right before housing came out, I was asking questions about all the details about that. It was just helpful."

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