Constraint or community: Investigating the tight-knit community at Barnard

Barnard promises the closest of connections to incoming freshmen but students reveal the paradox of social community: you recognize everyone but very few become true friends.

Photo by Vernon Demir/The Barnard Bulletin

By Maitree Mody

December 22, 2025

What is a “tight-knit community?” Is it the feeling of knowing everyone you walk past on your way to class? Is it the cheerful morning greeting with the people serving you breakfast at Hewitt? Is it the Thursday night parties where strangers quickly become friends? For Barnard freshmen, the answer is yes to all of the above. Yet, as the years go on, togetherness becomes something else: seeing the same faces, walking past acquaintances who were once friends, and feeling restricted by social circles. 

Barnard prides itself on being an intimate, tight-knit campus that supports and empowers its students. The College has long marketed an experience of transforming a small community into long-lasting meaningful connections. While freshmen arrive believing this promise, according to seniors, the reality is more nuanced. By junior year, it seems as though rigid social groups characterize the student body: you recognize everyone but connect with few.

During the first week of classes, when Olivia Hotes (BC ’29) needed crutches, Barnard students she did not know offered to help her carry her bag. “When I went across the street to Columbia, that was not the case,” said Olivia. “Someone let the door hit me.” This solidified her belief in the close-knitted community at Barnard. 

“I absolutely love everyone here,” said Arianna Walker (BC ’29). “No one ‘gatekeeps’ anything. They all try to help each other.” 

Sarah Burns (BC ’27) transferred to Barnard College specifically for this community. Coming from a big state school where lectures held hundreds of students, she found the smaller classes and tighter student body to be exactly what she had been seeking. “You get to be closer with your professors and students because you’re more engaged and you’re around the same people more frequently,” she observed.

From the outside coming in, Barnard delivers on its promise. Students are excited about being part of this ideal women’s college sisterhood. However, once you ask upperclassmen, it appears the story shifts.

“Honestly, I feel like Barnard is pretty cliquey,” said Sayuri Govender (BC ’26). 

Her roommate, Isabel Bravo-Contreras (BC ’26), commented: “Compared to my friends at Columbia, Barnard has more strict social circles, and I think people fall into them soon, like, [during] freshman or sophomore year.” Govender agreed that while there is a stronger sense of community at Barnard than at Columbia, people stick to their groups at the former institution. Being part of such a small community has its benefits and drawbacks, but Bravo-Contreras noted that “you end up knowing everyone, but you might not be out with them.”

Bravo-Contreras also noted that after sophomore year, students end up having classes with the same people. Her friends in different schools such as UCLA and UC Berkeley enjoy huge campuses: “They’ll have classes with different people every single semester” and are “surrounded by a bunch of new people versus here.” In comparison at Barnard, she said: “I think I’ve known at least one or a few people in every single one in my classes since my freshman year.” This familiarity results in comfort but also potential stagnation.

Govender’s friends at Rutgers University, the largest academic institution across the river with over 50,000 students, face a different kind of social challenge. One of her friends thrives in a big, diverse friend group but yearns for a tight-knit circle or a “super close girl group.” “I’m like, that’s all I have here, you know?” Govender said. “Whatever you don’t have, you want.”

Hints of this colder community are seen in conversations, where newer students notice a disconnect in the social situations at college. 

Olivia Wells (BC ’28) related social life at college to the “Mona Lisa Smile,” an inspiring movie set at Wellesley College where a close class of girls are encouraged to think and live beyond traditional norms. The movie represents Wells’s ideal version of a community where everyone supports each other. “Otherwise, it’s not as positive,” she said, reflecting on her social experience. “I was expecting Barnard to be a lot more [...] community-based, which I don’t always find it is.”

The College does try to build community through Access Barnard’s Pre-Orientation (Pre-O) and the New Student Orientation Program (NSOP), organized for freshmen the week before classes. “All my closest friends are all from Pre-O,” said Arianna Walker (BC ’29), an Access Barnard student who participated in Pre-Orientation. “But outside of that, I haven’t really made any other friends because it’s easier to understand each other. We all went through the same struggles and stuff.” 

Pre-O intentionally built community among students who might feel out of place at Barnard. “It was really nice because it made me feel like I’m actually part of a big family,” continued Walker. “But NSOP I would say, was pretty cold.” NSOP did not replicate Pre-O’s magic. Hotes agreed, adding that she is not friends with anyone from her NSOP group. “They could have done more things to actually connect us as a community,” said Walker.

Despite these gaps in community, upperclassmen do have hard-won advice. Reflecting on three years of forging friendships, Govender said: “People want to hang out more than you think they do.” She recommends asking people to get lunch because, as much as it does not seem like it, “people want to meet people.” Tell that person you like their new earmuffs, ask that person in your class to discuss homework, and grab dinner with that person who lives down the hall. 

According to Bravo-Contreras, there does not need to be much in common to spark friendship. “One of the good things about college is that you’re sort of finding yourself, so you end up making relationships with people who are different than you, think differently than you, and study different things than you.”

Meet people who inspire you to learn new languages, celebrate new festivals, and try different cuisines. Make the effort to create experiences for yourself and your friends. Take that train to karaoke in Koreatown, go ice-skating in Bryant Park, and stay up to watch the orange sun rise at the Brooklyn Bridge. The community will not come to you. You have to build it yourself.

“When you find someone that you do like, it’s important to keep that connection,” said Wells. Burns recommended a classic: “Join clubs. And talk to people at orientation.” Friendship is not an equation or a recipe; it is a spontaneous connection that cannot be forced. This advice sounds simple, the kind of wisdom that freshmen receive before coming to college.

However, they are words more valued by students when faced with the bittersweet reality of community. “Everyone here is so awesome that I wish I had more friends,” said Hotes. “I’m very happy with the friends that I have. But it’s, like, everyone’s so friendly and nice that I wish I had more opportunities to make new friends instead of sometimes feeling like restrained to the same people.” 

Ultimately, this becomes a contradiction at the heart of Barnard: a campus that is tight-knit, just not in the way that the brochure promises. The Barnard experience offers both genuine connections and unexpected constraints — often at the same time.