One night last September, an unusual sight appeared on the campus High Line. Spread outside of A6, a small, blue kiddie pool drew students to the normally empty patchwork of grass and pavement in front of dorm buildings.

A group of friends had filled the pool using a complex procession of empty trash cans that ferried water from dorms. Beyond amusing or confusing passersby, the pool did something remarkable for students on the transitory High Line - it got them to stop and stay.

For some, it provided an inflatable refuge from the muggy heat of Abu Dhabi. For senior Jules Bello, it was an opportunity to encourage activity and bring people together informally, openly, in a public space.

“The fact that this campus feels so empty at night — that’s big for me,” said Bello. “Because when I leave this dorm at night and walk around, there’s often no one outside and there’s nothing happening.”

For a university where a third of the student body is abroad at any given time, space becomes an important factor in crafting community. To leave NYU Abu Dhabi’s old residence, which had students stacked on top of each other within a single, horizontal slice of Sama Tower, means deciding how to sustain binds across a changing and growing population.

Thanks to NYUAD’s small size, as well as the institutional memory of what it’s like to live together in a single apartment building for four years, many students have seized on community as an important value for the university.

But as NYUAD grows into itself, administration and students have questioned how that intimacy can be sustained, especially within a student experience that often spans continents and cultures. More often than not, whether it’s in private conversations or on Facebook pages, students confess to feeling weighed down by loneliness, struggle and stress.

“I notice that students take on a lot here,” said Tina Wadhwa, associate director of Mental Health Promotion at the university. “And they sometimes want to shoulder it on their own and are reluctant to ask for help. But the community – other students, staff and faculty — are here to support.”

Since moving to Saadiyat, Wadhwa’s office has been promoting an image of community that takes on a more proactive shade. Programs like the bystander intervention training series promote the notion that community means more than close quarters or cozy Open Mics; it means shared accountability.

Wadhwa put it in straight-forward terms: “I want to encourage students to notice when others are in need.”

“I think that has a trickle-down effect,” she added. “When people start to intervene – whether it be a high risk situation or everyday incident — it feels really good for them to stand up on behalf of others.”

Bystander intervention training, which was recently made mandatory for all freshmen students, is just one of the programs that aims to bring people together and focus on issues of healthy relationships, mental well-being and lifestyles. REACH, a peer support group composed of NYUAD students, works under Wadhwa’s supervision to make dialogue an integral part of student life, which can often bear the gloss of collective stoicism and silence.

“The thing that I think is unique to NYUAD is it’s just really difficult, sometimes, to get people to open up and talk about these things,” said Rasha Shraim, a senior and member of REACH. “Part of how we’re trying to motivate people is by putting ourselves out there and saying listen, we’re students just like you and going through a lot of the same things. But we’re here and we want to talk about it.”

Bello, who also serves as the Officer of Communications on Student Government, agreed that students seemingly valued community on campus, but often run into the problem of communication.

“Face to face communication between students is the first step,” she said. ”Saying things to someone’s face, regardless of the tone, is to me already better than anything you’ve said on Facebook. Even if it’s not caring, loving words that make the person feel uplifted. Even if you’re just expressing grievances, already that’s a step on the way.”

“We just don’t talk on this campus,” she added. “We have communication issues.”

However, Bello added that concentrated efforts to instill a newer, closer type of community might meet resistance among the student body, especially if these events are arranged in formal or group settings.

“I think sometimes people might be skeptical of these programs, because I think people are reluctant to do things that they know are being organized to help them,” she said. “Whereas things like promoting concerts on campus might be more helpful. Rather than it being an event that is going to make you feel better, it’s an event that’s just really fun and that everyone’s going to do together.”

REACH offers a wide array of events on campus; some, like Mindful Monday, are casual gatherings that encourage students to decompress, whether it’s through meditation or coloring with magic markers for an hour. Other dialogue series zero in on specific topics like consent or healthy relationships, and encourage students to open up about their own personal struggles. Recently, the group has also started a newsletter for students who are off campus, so that those away from Abu Dhabi can feel like they still belong within a cohesive community.

REACH is in its third semester, and as the group grows, its members are conscious of the challenges in encouraging awareness on campus.

“You run into a lot of frustrations of people not showing up,” acknowledged Shraim. “I personally got to a point where I was questioning, 'If no one else wants to be involved, and talk about this, what is our purpose?'”

“But when students do speak and you realize that somebody just opened up and helped others see they’re not alone in going through something … then you realize that this work is useful,” she added. “We’re not going to change the entire campus overnight, but even if it’s just the few people that are starting to open up, that’s a good start for me.”

Wadhwa echoed this sentiment.

"I think support is powerful when it’s peer to peer," she said. "That’s why REACH was started, and why their work is so effective. I can facilitate an event like Mindful Monday or Adjusting to College, but when someone from REACH facilitates it they are able to provided advice and tips from their own experience, which can be quite impactful."

Programs like bystander intervention training hope to better cultivate this atmosphere by encouraging students to approach others who may be struggling — even if that means just checking in with someone who looks like they’re having a bad day. While Bello agreed that dialogue was a good step, she was unsure how proactive it should be.

“I don’t subscribe to the idea of someone approaching me and asking me if I’m okay if I look sad. Because I would just tell them that I’m fine — I say the same thing sometimes with people who are close to me, so there’s no way a stranger is going to make me feel better,” she said.

Instead, Bello advocated for compassion that reveals itself in the gritty inconveniences of the everyday.

“A stranger just doing nice things for me — like just smiling at me or doing a favor for me — that says more,” she said. “I value action and help in times of need. If you drop your fork and I give you my fork, to me that’s the cornerstone of showing someone cares.”