Connection Day team reflects on incredible coverage by various news outlets

Graphic by Evan Hughes

Professor Susan Perala-Dewey told the students running Connection Day that if they wanted to get work done, “writing is your workhorse.” So that is exactly what UMD students Paige Wagner, Kelly Gilomen, Trevor Peterson, Tiana Forbes and Kendra Kvebak did to spread awareness of Connection Day.

Connection Day originally stemmed from an Advanced Writing class where these students did a research project about the rise of loneliness in young people. The team subsequently gave a presentation on how they thought Connection Day would be a good way to combat this issue among students at UMD. 

What Connection Day consisted of was encouraging students to unplug from their phones for a while and look to have some social connection with each other. Various “unplugged” events were also held around campus to promote this connectivity. 

The idea stemmed from many of the founders noticing that a lot of their fellow classmates were not looking to socialize, but rather to just look at their phones before, and even during class.

Connection Day, held on Feb. 18, turned out to be a huge success, reaching approximately 200 students, and then getting coverage from the Duluth News Tribune, MPR, and even the local Duluth FOX News station.

The students wrote an opinion editorial for The Bark and emailed many of the department heads around UMD, and this writing and spread of awareness did not go unnoticed.

MPR did an article on the day, the local Duluth FOX station did a story, and even a wellness event located in Duluth contacted them after Connection Day asking them to come present at the event as well.

“It was really cool that a lot of the news and whatnot came and covered the day,” Gilomen stated. “It was awesome to see all the different programs support us on social media as well,” 

#UMDConnectionDay was a tag used in conjunction with the day, and posts using this were from various faculty and departments from UMD, such as the College of Education & Human Service Professions page, the Kathryn A. Martin Library page, and the College of Liberal Arts as well.

So why did Connection Day get so much coverage?

“There’s just not a lot of stuff like this,” Paige Wagner said.

Kendra Kvebak agreed. 

“I think people think its cool that it’s coming from students, because stereotypically people think that our age is so connected to our phones that wouldn’t want to do something like this,” Kvebak said.

“It’s also a surprising story I suppose,” Gilomen said.

Dan Kraker, the MPR reporter who covered Connection Day, even got in contact with the professor who the team based their research off of.

“It was cool that they had the guy that we took his research and used it,” Kvebak said.

Beyond just the surprising coverage, the day itself was rather successful as well, with around 200 people entering their name for the raffle. The raffle was the culmination of the day where students who pledged to connect more during the day got their name put in a box which the team pulled from at the end of the day for various prizes. 

Overall, there was a general excitement about the day, and gratitude toward the team for putting it on.

“Everyone that came up to me was excited about it,” Kvebak stated. “One girl came up to me and said that we should do it every year.”

Another part that the team enjoyed seeing was on sheets of paper at every table participants could write down their intentions or ideas about how to connect better with others. Some examples that stood out to the team included “smiling at people I pass by” and “be more in the moment.”

Given the success and excitement of many involved in the day, people began asking the team whether it was going to be put on again next year. The team hopes that that will be the case, although they want to wind down from the chaos of the day as well.

With the day being very busy and the team being required to keep the energy up the whole day, the team is very tired and still recovering, Gilomen said.

Ideas suggested included forming a club as well as seeing if there will be others who it could potentially be passed down to, but again, the group stated that they would still have to discuss it.

The team was meeting to make thank you letters for all those involved in the day, but when asked what they are hoping to do following the day, there was an obvious consensus.

“Resting… and catching up on classes,” Gilomen said.