Making friends as a teenager can be a stressful venture. That can be even more true on a boarding school campus, where day students and boarders sometimes can feel like they exist in different worlds.

With dorm check-ins, slotted times for visitation hours, and new friendships blooming all at once, some day students at Williston admit to finding it a bit hard to fit in and find times to hang out with their boarder friends. With one of the most popular conflicts around dorm policies, students are encouraged to find other ways to connect outside of the dorms.

With the combination of both boarding students and day students, there tends to be a noticeable line between the two groups. Borders living together rather than being at school for maybe half the day creates a more homey relationship with their peers. Around 62-64% (271) of students at Williston are from international countries or other states. To be exact, 22% of the community is international students, which leaves day student numbers around 37-38% (164). Williston has represented a total of 24 states and 26 countries in the past with students coming from parts of Asia, Europe, South America, Canada, and even Australia.

Brody Richardson, a six-year senior day student from Easthampton Mass., notices the lack of day student connections with the borders.

“I feel like the boarder life and boarders in general have more ways to connect due to all their down time and [the fact that they] live in the dorms together to hang out,” he said.

Charlotte McDowell, a five-year junior Day student from Easthampton, believes friendships can be difficult for day students.

“I don’t feel as close with the boarders because there are preexisting friendships within the boarder friend group,” Charlotte said.

Charlotte feels in particular that day students aren’t invited to join weekend shuttles. “Day students don’t want to go out of their way to drive to school just to do a shuttle bus to the mall or somewhere like that, and boarders tend to fill up the slots quickly,” she said.

Karuna Kaylan, a three-year junior boarder from Sharon, Mass., has a different perspective on living at Williston.

“It is definitely way easier to fit in because, for example, freshman year we all got really close pretty quickly and I made some close friends as a freshman even in the first weeks,” Karuna said. “It’s really easy to hang out,” she says when speaking about her connections with her boarder friends compared to day student friends.

Asked about how boarders can help make day students feel more connected and a part of their lives, Karuna said, “Instead of staying in our dorms all day we could go to Reed or the library and talk to some day students around there.”