As nearly 13,000 students living on the Hill headed home for the holidays in December, a small group of students signed up to stay in their dorms through winter break.

This year, UCLA Residential Life hosted 14 events for students in the annual winter stay-through program, including festive and cultural activities. Stay-through events are a way for students staying on campus over the break to come together, said Karyme Gonzalez, an assistant resident director for De Neve Towers.

One cultural event put on by the resident directors involved making parols – traditional Filipino Christmas lanterns – and included catered Filipino food, Gonzalez said.

“Those events are always really impactful,” she added. “Our students get to learn about another culture and try cultural food that maybe they haven’t tried before.”

Santsibyllah Seitz, a third-year mathematics and statistics and data science student, said she appreciated the Filipino food at the event as she herself is Filipino and does not get to have Filipino food often.

Chloe Jones, an assistant resident director for University Apartments North, said one of her favorite events was the winter break welcome, the first stay-through event.

“You get to see everyone meet each other for the first time,” Jones said. “It’s really nice to watch engagement happen during the first program.”

Esther Yao, a first-year linguistics and computer science student, said she initially attended the welcome event for the food but ended up meeting others staying through winter break at the event. She added that she thought the stay-through attendees shared a lot of common experiences they could discuss.

Gonzalez said she hopes stay-through events help students connect with each other while being away from home during the holidays, providing the opportunity for them to plan Los Angeles outings together.

“When they’re mingling together and getting to know each other and exchanging information, they can start planning those activities outside of the programming that we put on,” she added.

Maxon Li, a first-year biochemistry student, said he made a friend during a stay-through event for ornament decorating, and the two later visited Koreatown together.

Gonzalez said she found the ornament-decorating event particularly fun as it was heartwarming to watch students get excited about customizing their own ornaments.

Gonzalez added that she enjoyed seeing students interact on a hike in Los Leones Canyon.

Yao found the hike fun, she said, adding that she liked when they ran into a group of dogs who then joined their group photo.

As an international student, Li said he chose stay-through so he could travel in California and save money on plane tickets back to his home in China, which are twice the cost of the stay-through fee. He said he also traveled to San Francisco and San Diego.

Yao, also an international student from China, said she had similar reasons for doing stay-through and wanted to take the opportunity to travel to New York.

However, some said the experience of remaining on campus during winter break can also be isolating.

“I would say the downside was definitely the campus was very empty,” Li said. “I was not used to it.”

Seitz said she was disappointed that not many people showed up to the stay-through events, adding that she had hoped it would be more lively. Li added that while the events were cozy and he did make some friends, there were only around five or six students at each activity, and he had expected more students to attend.

“I think over time it’s also discouraging if you go to an event and no one’s really there,” Seitz said. “You don’t necessarily want to go to the next one.”

Jones said Residential Life is currently discussing the issue of low attendance, including brainstorming ways to get more engagement. To increase participation, Jones said the assistant resident directors discussed including more meals instead of just snacks, as well as decreasing the number of events to focus on a few bigger gatherings rather than several smaller activities.

“Our goal in Residential Life for our stay-through programming and events is always to continue to create a sense of community for those who decide to stay or cannot leave during the breaks,” Gonzalez said. “There are still people on duty, and if they (students) need anything, we’re here for them.”

The decision to stay on campus during break heavily depends on each student’s own situation, Seitz said, adding that she would recommend students look at options besides stay-through if they have them.

“I, for example, don’t really have any sort of parents to go home to, so that wasn’t really an option for me,” Seitz said. “Stay-through was my best option this year.”

Similarly, Li said deciding whether or not to do stay-through is dependent on the kind of winter break experience someone is looking for, adding that stay-through helped him achieve his goals of traveling around California.

While Yao also said choosing stay-through depends on the individual, she would ultimately recommend choosing stay-through if students want to stay on campus over the break.

“I kind of enjoy just being alone in the dorm,” Yao said. “It’s pretty peaceful and quiet on the dorm, on the Hill. And yeah, I do enjoy that. I enjoy when the campus is not that crowded.”