Sarah Leddin | Contributing Writer
It’s Freshers week, and from the crowd of eager societies emerge an over-enthusiastic group of red hoodies heading directly in your direction. With smiles the width of the Campanile blinding you and their pen raised high like a warrior’s spear, your immediate thought is to duck behind a group of distracted Freshers in the hope that these naive students would become your Trojan horse. But why are students so reluctant to approach the Student2Student (S2S) peer mentors? Is it an ignorance of knowledge that deters them? The prolific need for independence as an incoming college student that denies the help offered to them? Or is it just that red screams danger?
S2S is a student based peer mentoring program. All undergraduate and visiting students are assigned a pair or triplet of peer mentors to guide them through the mechanics of student life. Up to five years ago, only select courses were provided with this service, but now each course is assigned peer mentors who are usually currently studying that subject.
As part of orientation, first years are to meet peer mentors who take them aside to discuss the issues around their specific course and ease any nerves they have. The advantage that S2S offers is that it is a service by students for students. It offers freshers a unique perspective into the highs and lows of student life from people who have an enormous amount of empathy for their cause and can answer questions that lectures can’t. An issue that S2S face this year is the separation of the peer mentor meeting from the course meeting, which used to run in succession. Students are now offered the choice of rising early to meet their peer mentors, or stay in bed to nurse their Fresher’s week hang-overs, meaning many don’t avail of the benefit from talking to more mature students and don’t understand the cheesy e-mails that follow.
A service by students for students
This year I volunteered as an S2S peer mentor but my enthusiasm and excitement soon dwindled when I discovered the reality surrounding the student perception of S2S. Unlike the secondary school role played by Prefects, Meitheal and similar concepts, whereby student mentors become all-knowing beings in the eyes of frightened beginners, most students don’t feel they need S2S so don’t participate or attend events. It is the student apathy toward the organisation, that has led to the knowledge of S2S slipping beyond the consciousness of the student body. We were warned in our pre-orientation our students won’t reply to our e-mails, but according to a survey administered by S2S last year 90% of students do read their S2S e-mails. Event attendance rates can be poor (the mode attendance rate was 3-5 people) and this number becomes increasingly smaller as the year progresses but this is seen rather positively by the optimistic organisation as success of the students’ integration into college life.
The vast majority of students that engage with S2S value and appreciate what S2S does for them with over 200 students reporting that S2S helped them to stay in college last year. This year saw the highest number of recruitment for S2S with just under 700 volunteers. Ian Mooney, president of Student2Student, feels that “it is the perception of the S2S, and most mental health services, that deters so many students from getting in contact when they need to. As mental heath is becoming more mainstream and more open to talk about, a lot more students are accepting of situations they may be in personally and willing to make use of the service.” SU Welfare Officer Stephen Garry, former president of S2S, launched ‘Speak Your Mind’ through S2S last year, which involved a number of high profile guests, including Senator David Norris, and Trinity College students who discussed their history with mental health and worked towards openly communicating about mental health with the aim of abolishing the stigma around it. S2S also have a peer support service providing a one-to-one confidential appointment with a trained supporter. Their drop-in service which will begin on Wednesdays in house 6 soon.
With smiles the width of the Campanile blinding you and their pen raised high like a warrior’s spear, your immediate thought is to duck behind a group of distracted Freshers in the hope that these naive students would become your Trojan horse.
Mooney hopes that Student2Student can continue to make the service as acceptable and approachable for students as possible. First years in particular find peer mentors useful as a safety net-receiving the occasional reassuring e-mail reminding them that when times get tough, there is someone there, hearing older students expectations and fears reminding them that they are not alone in their thoughts and sometimes knowing you are not alone is enough. I would recommend Freshers attend at least one S2S event so they can gauge for themselves how valuable the service will be. Those over-enthusiast people in the red hoodies who you ran from on Fresher’s week were going to offer you free gifts without any consequences. Red doesn’t always mean danger.
