"LUV" program aimed at lonely students

By Catherine Ragsdale
The Collegian

Fresno State professor Sean Seepersad has come up with a program to help students cope with and overcome feelings of loneliness. As part of his dissertation, he implemented the program at the University of Illinois in fall 2003. Now, Seepersad will begin the program here at Fresno State.

The program, titled Lonely: Unburdening your Vulnerability, or “LUV,” is geared toward students who have experienced loneliness in their high school or college years, and have trouble building lasting relationships.

“The goal of the program is to give students the knowledge and skills to gain meaningful relationships,” Seepersad said. “Relationships begin within the group and move out from there.”

Another professor in Fresno State’s Child, Family & Consumer Sciences Department, Gary Malone, encouraged Seepersad to get the program running at Fresno State this year. In addition to teaching, Malone is a licensed therapist with a private practice. He said he meets with several young people who experience feelings of loneliness, both on and off Fresno State’s campus.

“While we have over 20,000 people on campus, you can easily walk around and feel very lonely,” Malone said. “Sometimes people need a little help moving out of that, and this group is a safe place for people to begin to reach out and connect.”

The program group meetings will commence on Wednesday, Oct. 4, and continue every Wednesday for seven weeks. At the meetings, students will go through different exercises and games to help them develop social skills and learn to establish lasting friendships. Students who are not able to participate in this session of the LUV program should be able to in the future, as Seepersad said he hopes to keep the program running long after this semester.

When people are at the LUV program Web site, csufresno.webofloneliness.com, they can also to choose to sign up to be a part of the program that will run this semester at Fresno State. The last day to sign up on the Web site for this term is Sept. 27. Students can view stories of people with similar experiences to their own on the program’s Web page. They can see how people felt before being part of the LUV program at University of Illinois, and how they had improved after the program was complete. Seepersad would like to meet with each student who has signed up to make sure the program will be a good match for them. Malone has been teaching at Fresno State for 14 years and said this program is the first he’s seen of its kind on campus. Malone said students are always welcome to go to the Student Health Center, but this program provides a different approach. “This is a place for people to make friends at a genuine level,” Malone said. “Thousands of students don’t have friends with them when they move away to go to college, so this is a good place to start.”

Seepersad, who teaches Adolescent Development and Family Relations at Fresno State, believes the initiation of such a program is the first step in the right direction for helping students with loneliness.

“One of the common ideas that people who have loneliness have is that they think they’re the only one,” Seepersad said. “It’s such a relief to see that there are other people. It makes them no longer feel lonely about feeling lonely.”

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