I came to McGill with a lot of big questions: What will I major in? What classes will I take? But most importantly, I asked myself: “Where am I going to hang out?”
I had this dream of what university would look like: Sunbathing on the grass with a hot dog in hand, watching people play frisbee on the field, lounging on a picnic blanket with friends in the park, or maybe just sitting in a cafe sipping coffee and watching the people go by. I didn’t realize it at the time, but there was a term for what I was looking for. It wasn’t until I took an urban sociology class that I realized what I searched for is what sociologists refer to as a third place—a place to just be.
The term “third place” was first coined by the sociologist Ray Oldenburg, who defined it as a space outside of the home (the first place) and work or school (the second place), where people gather informally to socialize, exchange ideas, and build community.
These spaces are essential not just for community life and mental well-being, but for fostering the kind of informal, peer-driven learning that enriches the university experience. As members of the McGill community, we must recognize our administration’s role in nurturing, or neglecting, these vital environments.
Everyone has their favourite third places, where they go in between classes, on the weekends, or when they need a space to just be. My favourite place on campus? The Geographic Information Centre (GIC), tucked away on the fifth floor of Burnside Hall. Calling the GIC a study space would be doing it a grave injustice—the GIC is multipurpose: You can heat up your lunch and eat while chatting with friends in some armchairs, study in silence in the quiet zone, work on the communal computers, join a group study session, or chat with friends in a booth. I go there ostensibly to study, but really, I go to see people. As a Geography major, the GIC is where I feel a true sense of both academic and social community. It starts with a familiar face that slowly grows into learning names, telling stories, and building friendships.
Ava Maika, U3 Arts, says her favourite third places at McGill include the Players’ Theatre and the University Centre. For her, these are places that offer both casual connection and meaningful conversation. Off-campus, she highlighted the Quebec Public Interest Research Group’s (QPIRG) Alternative Library, a space that prioritizes inclusion and accessibility.
“QPIRG’S alternative library is an amazing third place,” Maika wrote in a statement to The Tribune. “They prioritize community and inclusion, which is crucial. From their website: ‘A library is a site of gathering where everyone should feel welcome to be, read, and exchange.’ I like their definition.”
For another student, Sarah Grech, U3 Arts, her favourite third place is even closer to home. She has lived on boul. St.-Laurent for the last couple of years, and she considers the street itself to be a kind of third place.
“I especially enjoy the summer, when the street is closed off and you can interact with different shops, vendors, tourists, and locals—pretty much anybody,” Grech said in an interview with The Tribune. “I think these spaces all have a positive influence on my life—whether my experiences within them are positive, negative, or neutral—because they allow me to gain a better understanding of the world around me.” She also mentioned Square Saint-Louis and Parc La Fontaine as go-to spots regardless of the season.
For students at a large, often overwhelming institution like McGill, third places are more than just hangout spots—they are lifelines of belonging. These inclusive and welcoming environments combat feelings of isolation, especially for students living far from home for the first time. This sense of belonging doesn’t just affect emotional health—it can impact physical health too.
Take, for instance, the 1995 Chicago heat wave, which overwhelmed most of the Midwest and led to 739 heat-related deaths in Chicago over five days. Many lives were lost, but studies revealed that neighbourhoods with stronger community ties, where neighbours knew and looked out for each other, fared significantly better, even when compared to neighbourhoods of higher socioeconomic status. Consider a similar finding in Roseto, Pennsylvania, where researchers noticed that the rate of heart disease in the borough’s close-knit Italian-American community was strikingly low. Upon investigation, studies concluded that strong social connections and communal living played a central role, and coined the phenomenon as the “Roseto Effect.” Our environments and our relationships within them have a tangible influence on our health and well-being. Community is crucial, and it needs space to grow.
Beyond building a sense of community, third places are educational spaces. University is about more than classes and coursework. Learning happens everywhere: In extracurricular clubs, student-run services, and especially in casual dialogue with peers.
Professor Jan Doering, now at the University of Toronto (UofT), but formerly of McGill’s Department of Sociology, reflected on how physical space shaped his connections with students.
“At McGill, there was no graduate student office space in Leacock, where my office was located. As a result, I did not usually have any casual interactions with graduate students in that space,” he wrote to The Tribune. “In my new office at the UofT, graduate student workspaces and faculty offices are in the same space, which means I have more conversations with students.”
The value of informal learning extends off campus, too.
“Speaking in the evening (rather than during work time) and in casual spaces (restaurants, bars) makes it easier to share new ideas that have not yet solidified,” Doering added. “Conferences can do the same thing, but they often encourage a somewhat performative style of interaction that is less generative.”
These spaces can also become political. Here, people can come together to share values, organize, and resist. Physical space is never neutral. Its design, who controls it, and who are welcome all influence which voices are heard and which are suppressed. At McGill, this dynamic has come into sharp focus in the last year as student encampments and other protests have turned everyday locations, including lawns, streets, and buildings, into sites of collective resistance. When students occupy space against McGill’s demands, they are reclaiming visibility and asserting a right to be heard within the university they attend. However, excessive surveillance and security measures can make third places feel tense or inaccessible, discouraging the openness and spontaneity that make them generative.
“Post-encampment, the heavy security presence on campus has certainly not made me feel any more safe,” Maika said.
The power of a third place lies in its openness, its ability to welcome multiple perspectives, hold disagreement, and be a place for exchanging ideas. Cafes, libraries, and student lounges become places where political movements are born, people come together, and ideologies form through conversations. Without these spaces, activism becomes fragmented, driven into the margins, or shut down altogether. While McGill says it aims to create spaces where students can safely explore and express ideas, the administration must ask itself if it is truly pursuing this aim, or whether it is policing campus spaces into silence. A university that values free inquiry cannot treat space as apolitical.
How we gather is how we resist and speak truth to power.
While we have seen third places bounce back post-pandemic, the echoes of lockdown life still linger, as well as the digital platforms that sprung up to replace physical ones. During COVID-19, makeshift third places appeared online, from Zoom breakout rooms and Discord servers to Twitch streams and Netflix Parties. They became lifelines for many students, especially those isolated from campus. In these digital spaces, people could study together, organize events, and keep their social community alive during government lockdowns. Despite the help these platforms provided, they also highlighted the limitations of online communities. Screens can connect us, but they can’t replicate the feeling of bumping into someone while on the way to class or the unplanned depth of a conversation that lasts a little too long during a morning run to the cafe.
There has also been a growing discourse about the “digital public square,” referencing the idea that civic discussion and debate now happen on platforms like X, Reddit, and even TikTok. These spaces can empower access, especially for those beyond traditional institutions. However, they don’t come without drawbacks.
“Online spaces attract similar mindsets,” Doering said. “In physical spaces, you meet people from all walks of life.”
Algorithms, designed to reinforce engagement, often create echo chambers—spaces where users only encounter opinions they already agree with. Without the friction of physical proximity, we lose opportunities for disagreements and negotiations.
While digital third places have value, we should resist the idea that they can replace the real thing. Face-to-face interaction isn’t just nice to have, but foundational to learning how to live with others and be a member of society. The richest communities, online or offline, are those that allow for organic interactions and all the messiness and surprise encounters that they come with. That is what physical spaces offer that digital versions often lack.
Third spaces allow for spontaneous and creative social interactions, but the spaces themselves are shaped by deliberate funding decisions and architectural design as well as sustained policy measures. At McGill, we need to move beyond the idea of spaces as neutral backdrops to learning, and recognize them as the active participants they are in educational experiences. The university has a responsibility to foster inclusive and accessible gathering spaces to support community, learning, activism, and well-being. They are not distractions from university life—they are university life.
So, go find your third place. Use it. Share it. Cherish it. Remember, sometimes the most important part of your education isn’t where you have to be—it’s where you choose to go.
