Students and faculty gathered around a rainbow of tables below Tommy Trojan on Tuesday for the University’s inaugural Welcome Back Wellness Fair, hosted by the USC Office of Religious and Spiritual Life, Undergraduate Student Government and Hillel. In addition to the free stickers and candy, the fair was an opportunity for students to familiarize themselves with the wellness resources available to them throughout the year. 

In the corner of the fair dedicated to physical safety, organizations such as the USC Department of Public Safety and the American Lung Association tabled with resources for students. The American Lung Association specifically works on helping students quit smoking and vaping.

Dace Roberts, a junior majoring in philosophy, politics and economics, said he is living alone for the first time this year and was grateful for the opportunity to explore the resources offered by the University.

“I find myself thinking on my own a lot more,” he said. “I think it’s important to try and direct that in a positive way and allow students to have resources to know they can go to someone if they feel isolated.” 

Advocates of all different sectors of personal health attended the fair, including those concerned with mental, physical, spiritual, emotional and sexual health. 

The SC Garden Club and Woodlums are two organizations at USC working to promote mental wellness by helping students reconnect with nature. At the Wellness Fair, the organizations promoted their upcoming outdoor opportunities. 

“We have a specific focus on trying to close the gap between minority groups and the outdoors, especially specifically trying to target more of the Black students here at USC,” said Woodlums outdoor guide Ayonnah Tinsley, a junior majoring in arts, technology and the business of innovation. She said that this is particularly important for USC students because of the lack of accessibility to the outdoors in downtown Los Angeles.

The Team Sabrina fundraising group also attended the Fair on behalf of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, which works toe43rtrgfff raise awareness for suicide prevention and mental health. 

“It’s really meaningful for USC to have this kind of wellness fair because there are a lot of resources available,” said Taylor Ryan, founder of Team Sabrina and a junior majoring in non-governmental organizations and social change. 

Ryan founded Team Sabrina in honor of her mother who died by suicide in 2017. 

“We can all get caught up in social life and school and academics and everything that it’s kind of hard to actually realize where help is located when you are looking for it,” she said.

Mikayla Geisner, another leader of Team Sabrina and a junior majoring in business administration, said that having the fair at a central location on campus demonstrates USC’s dedication to student wellness. 

Ishita Mehta, a graduate student studying computer science, visited tables at the fair with Rituja Kalita, a graduate student studying computer science game development. They are both international students from India, which Kalita said has come with overwhelming changes. The fair helped them both understand what resources the University can provide to ease the transition.  

“These resources are really helpful, we do struggle a lot,” Mehta said. “When you see that these things are available so freely on campus and actually being advertised about, [and] there is no stigma around it, it gives you a boost that ‘I should access these resources and use them for myself,’ instead of them just being part of an email.” 

Leenie Baker is the wellness director at USC Hillel and a leader in the Bradley Sonnenberg Wellness Initiative, a program founded at Hillel which includes professional counseling as well as peer-to-peer support. She said the first six weeks of class are often the hardest for students in terms of their mental health. 

“We wanted to make these resources available as soon as possible,” she said, “so that even if students are just walking to class and they don’t stop and hang out for a while, they’re still hopefully seeing the different resources that are available so when they do have need of the resources, they know where to find them.”