I can’t exactly remember when Point Park was granted a community story for each graduating class – it was either late in the fall semester of 2022 or early 2023. The feature was released in August of 2022, with our university getting it a bit later than our neighboring, larger colleges.

When we finally got this feature, my expectations were of confusion and wonder. Was anybody going to post on the story? Is this how some people are going to make friends on campus? Was it going to be used for nefarious purposes? How many trolls are going to be on there? I had some optimism, but it was also met with a healthy amount of worry. This was freshman year for me after all, so anxiety was heightened about everything worth thinking about.

That worry was mostly unfounded.

One feature of the stories that we take for granted is the fact that only people who verifiably go to Point Park can join and post on them. If this wasn’t true, it would open the floodgates for all sorts of problems. Adding onto such, everyone can see the user that posts on the stories, which has appeared to bring down the possibility of anybody trying anything bad. Some people have absolutely no shame in what they post despite this and while I admire their lack of care, not everyone shares the same appreciation. Whether a ton of posts on the community story is a good thing is subjective, but I see it as free entertainment.

However, that doesn’t mean everything is all sunshine and rainbows. Some posts are mean-spirited and are sprinkled with a bit of oversharing, but that is unfortunately an expectation in any internet space. This is not unique to one community story either; every class that has an active story seems to have at least one person constantly spamming it with random content. Although, that is not a huge deal. Instead of thinking it as annoying, their posts can be appreciated for trying to keep the story active. Unless, of course, they do just annoy people and nothing more.

Because of such minor problems, I have heard people in my close circle say that the story is bad or needs to be deleted. Not only is that kind of an overreaction, but instead I think we should all be thankful for the community stories. They have been able to foster fun discussions about student’s favorite and least favorite classes, advertise events in a much quicker fashion than just flyers alone, and help people out with their important assignments. Every time a cinema production student makes a post asking about finding actors for their P2 projects, I always hold hope that they find the actors they are looking for. In fact, I posted a survey for a class last semester, and I was gifted with some fantastic responses – except for the one person who made an “Among Us” joke in every text box – and it was very appreciated. Hopefully more students learn to love the community stories, as silly as they can all sometimes be.

And there is not necessarily a better story to compare between them all either; bashing the class of 2027 story because it is currently the freshman story just makes you look silly. You were a freshman too at one point.