Wichita State student life is shockingly spiritless. On any given day, students go to classes, study and work hard to achieve their degrees. Besides this, there aren’t many opportunities for students to meet people outside of their classes and desired majors. 

There are a few events after the beginning of the fall semester. But other than that, student life at WSU is bland and mundane, at least compared to other universities in the state, like the University of Kansas (KU) and Kansas State University (KSU). 

This seems strange since Wichita is the largest city in the state with nearly 400,000 people as of 2022. This doesn’t even account for Wichita’s metro population, which has 200,000-plus more people. 

With more people comes more opportunities to explore and find who you are individually, which seems to be what WSU’s student life is about.

Besides the Garage Party and Clash of Colleges within the first weeks of the fall semester, there really aren’t many other events that succeed in university-wide student engagement. 

But that’s not such a bad thing. 

WSU is considered a “suitcase school,” meaning many students go home, usually out of town, over the weekend. 

During the fall semester of 2022, only 13% of the 12,696 undergraduate students enrolled at WSU lived on campus, according to U.S. News. This includes the student population living in Shocker Hall during their freshman year.

Wouldn’t this mean larger universities have more students who travel home on the weekend? 

Wrong.

KU and KSU have double the percentage of students who live on campus, granted the total population at each school is higher than WSU’s.

KU saw 25% of its student population living on campus in 2022; KSU had 24%.

So why and how do these universities have grander student life, if they’re in smaller cities?

Sporting events, in particular, are at the forefront of this argument. I challenge you to walk around downtown KU’s Lawrence and KSU’s Manhattan on any given college game day and tell me how it’s not different from college game days in Wichita.

I doubt most WSU students even know when sporting events are. The university doesn’t even have a football team, which is typically a premier sport at most major universities in the country.

WSU men’s basketball used to routinely sell out games in the Roundhouse but hasn’t had a sellout crowd since 2020, while KU sold out its 356th consecutive game last December. 

To be fair, COVID-19 reshaped many people’s outlooks, but it’s been four years since the outbreak began and most of the United States has comfortably returned to normalcy.

So why haven’t fans, especially students who are fans, of WSU basketball returned to the days when Charles Koch Arena would have no elbow room in the stands?

The dwindling number of attendees at sporting events, in my mind, is directly linked to the student life of the school. If they can’t make it out to home games, what makes you think they’re willing to go to other university-wide events?

Greek life is even becoming less popular. 

During the spring 2022 semester, the number of active and new members in Greek life totaled 578. The following spring semester, the number of active and new members was 552, which is roughly 10% of the full-time student population. 

KU reported that 4,000 students — 20% of its population — are involved in Greek life.

Until there is an increased interest in Greek life and more attendees at sporting events, WSU can pack its bags in hopes of more student engagement.