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 space,” 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 places 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.

My parents never pushed me towards religion. They are atheists themselves, so my exposure to Christianity was limited to attending Friday night youth group sessions with my aunt at her local Evangelical Lutheran church. I remember attending a Halloween service when I was 11 or 12—on that particular evening, the pastor told us we would be protected from the demons of horror movies, as long as we were baptized and followed the teachings of the Lord. I, meeting neither of these requirements, was terrified on the drive home, even though my parents had told me not to believe the things that the church had taught us that night.

Despite the pastor’s warnings, my disbelief in a higher power only grew as I got older. More recently, however, I’ve noticed that atheism makes it difficult to answer the sorts of questions that one might find themselves asking when trying shrooms for the first time (I assume, that is…),  like “Can one ever be genuinely altruistic?” and, “How does one go about making their life meaningful?” Unfortunately, atheists don’t often believe these questions have definite answers. I’m not all that satisfied with this conclusion. 

This dissatisfaction has become harder and harder to ignore throughout my time at McGill, particularly in the past 12 months, presumably because of the increased independence I have as an “adult” who lives alone. In any case, it has forced me to reevaluate the views I’ve held so strongly for the past 20 years—crucially, this has meant addressing my convictions towards faith.

I think there are two things fundamentally wrong with the way I have been approaching conversations about religion. The first is that I have judged religion from a “right or wrong” perspective, getting hung up on the truth of different cosmologies and beliefs, rather than focusing on the impacts that faith has on believers and communities. 

Najda Kassam, U3 Arts, who grew up Muslim but now feels more agnostic, continues to understand the comfort that faith gives people. 

“Nobody wants to feel like they have to be the strongest human alive, they don’t want to deal with everything on their own, it is painful and sad,” Kassam said in an interview with //The Tribune//. “And I felt that way, [because] I was trying to deal with it all on my own. But when I think about it, I find it’s easier to cry in the arms of my friends, right? And that’s kind of what religion does for people.”

People have turned to religion in times of crisis for as long as it has existed. To dismiss this found comfort in the name of science or “rational” thinking is irresponsible and, frankly, rude. My preferred method of self-soothing involves several hours’ worth of Instagram reels, so to each their own. 

At a societal level, religion has inspired artists and architects around the world for centuries. It has created spaces for communities of like-minded people to form. It brings peace and provides one with a general way of being. While it would be incorrect to say that organized religion has been harmless throughout human history, it is equally problematic to ignore the reasons people have turned to faith in the first place.

The artistic and ritualistic practices that emerged from religion create a myriad of beautiful things to engage with, regardless of whether you hold the corresponding faith.

Kat Mulligan, fourth-year French Studies student at Concordia University, is a regular church-goer, despite identifying as an atheist.

“I like hearing the organ music, the choir, and I like that it’s a sort of meditative space,” Mulligan said in an interview with //The Tribune//. “I think Catholicism does a good job with aesthetics, so especially as someone who doesn’t have the faith aspect to religion, I like the kind of show they make of their religious experience.”

These environments have built avenues to experience the beauty of religion while simultaneously being surrounded by people who show up for causes they care about. This in itself can have a restorative effect on your faith in humanity.

“I really like the aspect of ritual, and I think it’s nice when people go all in on something [….] In general, I like the idea that Catholicism wants you to hold yourself to a high standard morally,” Mulligan said. 

My second error was to think that ‘religion’ and ‘atheism’ mean the same things to everyone who uses the terms. Throughout my interviews, it became clear that people do not necessarily stand by every aspect of a particular doctrine, and that part of coming of age is deciding for yourself what aspects of faith (or a lack thereof) are meaningful and valuable for you. Even I, a diehard atheist, find myself praying before writing an exam or waiting to hear back from an internship application. Seeing doctrines as monoliths ignores a lot of individual variation in belief and practice. The beauty of having a belief system partially lies in the way each person adapts it to their own life in practice.

“It doesn’t have to be one rule for everybody, and there are so many different parts of the interpretation that you can make as you go. That’s the point of any piece of literature you’ll ever read in your life,” Kassam said. “It’s all interpretive. No one’s going to read the same thing the same way.”

//Perhaps//, I thought, //there was some interpretation of faith that could help my atheistic heart with its existential line of questioning.//

Alongside each person’s unique interpretation of their beliefs and traditions, the students I spoke with all had their own approaches to the relationship between religion and morality. Jordan Ona, third-year English Literature student at Trent University, mentioned the Sermon on the Mount from the Gospel of Matthew as an important source of moral guidance. Its teachings encourage one to practice compassion, humility, and forgiveness.

“That is one thing I appreciate that religion stresses on, is that it really does strip away everything you think is important,” Ona said in an interview with //The Tribune//. “Like having good skin care, a good body, being smart and in school? No, it’s loving your neighbour, your mom and dad, brother, everyone you love, and just washing everyone’s tears away. That’s what’s important.”

In contrast, Kassam’s takeaway was less about specific instructions from a holy text, and more about the fact that, as humans living on the same planet, we are all innately connected. However, this feeling of connection, in her eyes, is not entirely removed from the idea of faith.  

“I think God is this interconnectedness within us and these strings that attach us and the ties that we are, and so it would be sort of like severing that if I dishonoured it, or if I didn’t go about [life] in a way of acknowledging everything around me,” Kassam said.

This narrative ties into other faith-related aspects of Kassam’s life, namely the existence of the soul, and the value of curiosity and education.

“I kind of think that [education is] the way I carry through with my faith,” Kassam said. “So even though I don’t necessarily have to go to mosque or have to be in a certain place to pray, I find that being inquisitive and learning and finding things out and doing research gives me this sort of meditative, or religious sort of aspect to it.”

Zachary Liu, U3 Science, highlighted the overlap that atheists and theists may have in their belief systems despite taking different routes to reach the same conclusions.    

“A lot of the values that I think of when I think of religion, I think I have not necessarily the same values but similar ones, except mine weren’t obtained through religion,” Liu said in an interview with //The Tribune//. “When I want to help someone or do something that I deem to be morally right, it doesn’t have anything to do with any external force. This is just me wanting to do it because I want someone else to be happier.” 

While Liu currently identifies as an atheist, Liu’s father was Catholic, and his mother was Buddhist. Understanding religion was thus an important part of his upbringing, even if it did not ultimately inform his moral compass. 

“For some parts of my family, it’s a big part of what their community looks like,” Liu said. “And then so for me, it’s important, for example, if I want to understand my grandparents. I think it’s important to have that context of their social circle like in what their events are like.”

Sam Kunesch, U3 Science, echoed a similar idea to Liu, on the premise that while religion can help people find meaning and direction, it is not the only way to do so. As a biology student and a former Catholic, Kunesch looks to the biological principle of reciprocity for moral inspiration, which is reminiscent of the biblical teaching to “love thy neighbour.”   

“Reciprocity is a strategy where an organism acts in a way that temporarily reduces its own fitness while increasing another organism’s fitness, with the expectation that the other organism will reciprocate the favour later,” Kunesch said in an interview with //The Tribune//. “So we have an evolutionary advantage to something that is also advised to us by the Bible [….] It’s the closest thing to what I consider a universal truth when the religious people and the scientists can agree on something.”

*** 

One of the final questions I asked each of my interviewees was whether they thought life is inherently meaningful. In retrospect, I sounded an awful lot like Jaden Smith talking about the political and economic state of the world, but it was one of the driving questions behind this project, so I asked it anyway. 

It wasn’t until Ona asked me how I would answer it myself that I realized I hadn’t considered the question all that deeply. It took merely a few seconds of critical thinking to realize that, while life may not have some greater, philosophical meaning, the fact remains that I am alive now, surrounded by people whom I love. My care for others exists whether it is biologically, divinely, or philosophically motivated, and I would be doing a disservice to myself and the people around me by not embracing it.         

Whether you find your meaning and morals by following the word of God, through the principle of reciprocity, or simply out of the goodness of your heart, it would seem that ultimately, we are all working towards one common goal: To help and to love one another. And really, what more can we do?