“We also remind the students that they're moving into a community—a hard working community where people are,” Boyle said. "It's not college life. You know, it's not the Mods.”

“I never felt like the stigma of ‘Oh, they’re going to try to make me Catholic,’ which I think is good,” Bail said. “I’m still Hindu and confident in my own beliefs, but I’ve also been able to engage in Christianity while sharing that Hindu part of myself as well with others.”

“I just felt a little, you know, disappointed that sadly, now a reality is going to be that now there might be even less of a population of students who look like me or come from similar backgrounds as me,” Beato said. “And there's going to be even less of a population of that in schools that are already predominantly white.”

Like many Boston College seniors hoping to take full advantage of their remaining days on the Heights, Kristen Donnelly said she and her friends have a bucket list to tackle before graduation.  This bucket list, Donnelly explained, is particularly important to her because the COVID-19 pandemic prevented her from doing many of the activities and...

“In this weird twist of fate, out of something that was so evil and destructive, I got this glimpse into the really compassionate depths of humans,” Downes said. “It has supercharged me at times when I would otherwise have been really quite down and out. So I would love to find a way to bottle that all up and be able to give it to other people in their times of need as well.”