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Student opens a new Facebook group, Nottingchums, to combat loneliness at uni

It’s more than just a great pun


A new Facebook page has been created exclusively for current Notts students: Nottingchums. Aside from the great pun, the page aims to help students connect with more people around the uni.

It recognises that uni can sometimes be a very lonely place and aims to combat that loneliness with a safe space where people can make new friendships and meet new people.

The Nottingham Tab spoke to one of the students behind Nottingchums, Adam Huckerby, a second year Politics and International Relations student.

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Adam Huckerby – admin of the page

Having seen a lot of posts on the ‘Nottsfessional’ (a Nottingham confession page) about feeling lonely or homesick he realised that it is a much more widespread issue than people realise and “naturally a Facebook group felt like the right thing to connect those looking to meet people” other than the people they are randomly allocated to live with in their halls/flats. Second year Law student Louisa had the same idea so they merged the two pages together to make Nottingchums.

They hope the page will “help relieve the feeling of loneliness”. The page is a place where you can meet new people you wouldn’t necessarily come across in your day to day uni life, with tens of thousands of students there are loads of new people to meet.

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The page is there for people to post if they feel lonely or just want to expand the number of friends they have: "If someone wants to do something they can post in the group. Want to go to the cinema but don’t want to go alone, post in the group. Likewise, if there’s a group of people doing something and they are happy for others to come along with them, they can post in the group too”.

There are already plans for people to meet up with a Crazy Golf event planned for Sunday 20th January. More events just like this are going to be organised over the next few months with the admin and others be posting events up, such as, “crazy golf, bowling, Ocean and other events that people can come to and meet new people at the same university as them”.

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Almost half of UK students (46 per cent) admit to feeling lonely during their time at university “especially around exams and coursework deadline”, and so a group “where we can post and take part in activities to take your mind off during those lonely exam periods” is what a lot of students need to feel less lonely during these periods and for the rest of their time at uni.

They hope the events will have a decent turn out and when events are posted they “will always ask people to either comment or DM one of the admins if they intend on coming so [they] can get a rough idea on numbers and plan from there”.

Both Adam and Louisa plan to attend all of the admin-planned events to “ensure the safety of everyone taking part” and they “urge anyone with any concerns to contact [them]”. With regards to the events hosted by members of the group they 'urge those taking part to let friends/family/or even the admins know where they are going to ensure safety, and if they are unsure about a meet up organised by a member to trust their gut instinct if they think it’s dodgy”.

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Louisa – admin of the page

With it being exclusive for current UoN students they hope it will remain the wholesome page it should be. They “check every profile that requests to join the group to ensure they’re both a real account, and a UoN student”. Although, “if a student from another university did want to come along to an event then [they] wouldn’t just turn them away”.

There are also plans to one day expand the page into a society.