When they graduated in May, the senior class walked away not only with diplomas in hand but with some good friends by their sides, too. That they did so is all the more fabulous when you consider that they were the COVID-19 class — those who started their first year online. Here’s a salute to some of the forever friends of the Class of 2024.

All together now
Ericka Darrah, Dylan Nguyen, and Antigone Antonakakis

Antigone is certain she established core memories —  a concept made popular by a movie from her childhood,  Inside Out — in the early days of her friendship with Dylan and Ericka. “They’re events that change the trajectory of  your life,” she says. She won’t soon forget meeting and bonding with this friend group on Zoom. They often talked late into the night in what could be described as the pandemic-era equivalent of quiet-hours hangouts in the hallways of Travers-Wolfe. “We would be singing YouTube karaoke,” she says. “Not many people can say they had  that college experience. It was a really great squad we  had going.”

The queso doesn’t stand alone
Josh Romero

Josh, a civil engineering major, says he feels a “weird, unspoken camaraderie” with the entire Class of 2024 because of how they all started. Case in point: convocation. He recalls eating a quesadilla and watching a screen of blank faces from home — a far cry from the usual pomp of marching onto Quimby’s Prairie for a “Welcome to TCNJ” presidential address. He went to a virtual involvement fair, too, and signed up for club tennis even though he had no idea how that would work online. Spoiler: it didn’t.

From the heart
Diana Jacob and Vaidehi Valera

“She’s Indian, a bio major, and she sings.” That’s what Diana noticed she had in common with Vaidehi when she first scrolled Vaidehi’s Instagram. Online, and then in person, the two solidified a friendship as they studied for Chem 201, sang Bollywood duets, and served as leaders in the Indian Student Association together. “I was really excited to actually see the people I met online,” says Diana. “Especially Vaidehi, since we had become so close on text.”

“I didn’t want to lose touch with  my Indian culture in college,” says Vaidehi. “Everything just lined up with the two of us; I knew we’d get along.”

First impressions; fast friends
Paige Babino and Alexa Giacoio

Paige was one of only 1,168 students who returned to campus for the spring semester after an all-online start. But it wasn’t quite what she had hoped. “I ended up going home after two weeks,” she says. “It was depressing. I was in a dorm alone.”

But as summer rolled around and she geared up for her sophomore year, she saw a post on the TCNJ Class of 2024 Facebook group advertising an opening in a Campus Town apartment. Paige dropped a comment that she was interested; Alexa was on the other end.

Self-admitted overthinkers, the pair say they worried about living with a stranger, meeting each other for the first time as they moved into their new setup in Campus Town.

“When you go with a random roommate, you don’t have expectations,” says Alexa. “It could be a flop, or it could be something amazing.”

A trip to Target and Starbucks in October of their sophomore year led to an inside joke about Chuck E. Cheese, and the “a-ha” moment they realized their friendship was the real deal.

Together, TCNJ felt like home. Especially for Paige: “Freshman year, I didn’t want to be there. But sophomore year, I didn’t want to leave.”

“A random Facebook comment turned into one of the best friendships,” says Alexa. “We’ve already talked about being in each other’s weddings.”

Maya in the middle
Adesuwa Osemwegie, Maya Sharpe, and Neerjah Upreti

There’s a Latin phrase, omne trium perfectum, meaning “everything that comes in threes is perfect.” That seems to be the case in the friendship between Adesuwa, Maya, and Neerjah. But all three admit it took some work.

It was Maya who pulled the friendship together. She became friends with Adesuwa and Neerjah, each separately at first. She and Neerjah were from neighboring towns and connected through Instagram. Maya and Adesuwa were applying to some of the same programs, such as the Bonner Community Scholars and Women in Learning and Leadership. Realizing they would be in some organizations together, Maya and Adesuwa planned to be roommates when campus reopened.

They joke about it now, but Adesuwa and Neerjah got off to a rocky start. They all ended up living in Eickhoff Hall as sophomores — Maya and Adesuwa on the second floor, Neerjah on the third. With COVID-19 still a concern, Adesuwa chose to eat in her room, while Maya ventured down to the dining hall,  where she often met up  with Neerjah, and both  would return to Maya  and Adesuwa’s room afterward.

“I was really socially anxious when I came to TCNJ,” says Neerjah. “I tried to compensate by being overly friendly, which took Adesuwa aback.”

“I would be like, ‘Who is this girl, and why does she keep coming to my room?’” says Adesuwa.

But with some clever mediating from Maya, the pairs quickly merged to form a threesome. “I love both of them,” says Maya. “I wanted all of us to be friends.”

The three found common ground in their upbringings. “We all come from immigrant households,” says Adesuwa. “And that’s one of the things that ties us together.”

Maya thinks all three being Bonner Scholars helped them to embrace their cultural heritages, even on a predominantly white campus. “In Bonner, there’s explicit time to reflect on our identities. It lit the match for the three of us to be open and vulnerable with each other,” she says.

Soon, the friends were hitting thrift stores together, moving into an apartment in their junior year, cooking Brussels sprouts, and sitting on their living room couch talking for hours.

It may have been Maya who pulled them together, but now, the best friends take pride in pulling each other up. “They have created this safe space for me to grow and become better, and I believe I’ve done that for them as well,” says Neerjah.

“I feel so privileged to have the friendship that we have,” says Adesuwa. “These are the people my kids will refer to as aunties.”

Dynamic duo
JP Egan and Ben Rogoff

During the pandemic, JP tried to rush a fraternity online. “My dad was in a fraternity, and he’s still friends with many of the brothers,” he says. However, as JP went through the process, he felt it was difficult to make connections and find his place online. So, instead, he started his own fraternity.

JP knew some upperclassmen who wanted to get a TCNJ chapter of the international fraternity Tau Kappa Epsilon off the ground. He recruited his first friend at TCNJ, Ben, to take the reins with him. JP and Ben were both drawn to the organization’s values of love, charity, and esteem, and they liked the service focus of the organization (their main charity is St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital). After two years of paperwork, they officially established TKE on campus. They have grown the chapter to 34 brothers in their time leading it.

Along the way, JP and Ben became not just brothers, but best friends. They are both New Jersey Devils fans, and enjoy the same music (though JP is “kind of a music snob,” says Ben). And as housemates, they have shared a wall and confirmed TKE was the exact fraternity they needed in order to find their people.

We’ll be each other’s best man at our weddings,” they both say.

A couples calculation
AJ Tortoriello and Lauren Bayzath

Social distancing, masks, and lack of in-person events made dating difficult for the Class of 2024. Lauren and AJ, both math majors, were grateful they shared some courses online. “We got comfortable seeing each other in our classes and we started talking as friends,” says AJ.

“We were adjusting to college-level classes, and computer science, in particular, was really hard,” says Lauren. “We would FaceTime each other to work together and we’d end up talking about more than just the project.”

They also took advantage of the “Spend a Day” event that the college offered their first fall. Students were grouped by major, so AJ and Lauren spent the day on campus, and together.

“Meeting her in person after seeing her online definitely made me more comfortable talking to her,” says AJ. Then they both came to campus spring semester and lived in Wolfe Hall. “To have someone I was close to just down a couple flights of steps was nice,” he says.

They became a couple their sophomore fall and have been together since. “It was such a weird first year,” says Lauren. “But once we were adjusted sophomore year, we made that commitment to each other.”

Becoming besties
Kelsey Heaney and Liz Mancini

When it comes to life after TCNJ, Liz and Kelsey smile big at one possibility: “Teaching in the same school,” says Liz. Considering that Liz majored in special education and Kelsey wants to work in an early childhood classroom, the idea is not far-fetched.

The women met in Zoom meetings for Best Buddies, a TCNJ club and national organization that encourages friendships between students with and without disabilities. For Kelsey, who was part of the four-year Career and Community Studies certificate program and has an intellectual disability, the club was a way to interact with TCNJ peers outside of her program. “Making friends has always been a struggle for me,” she says. “Best Buddies made it easier.”

It was a friends-at-first-sight moment when they eventually saw each other in person. “Someone with red hair came running at me,” says Liz. “We just hugged and I knew it was going to be a good friendship.”

Since then, they’ve bonded over one too many Dunkin’ runs and text strings asking each other for advice.

“We’ll definitely have a friendship after TCNJ,” says Kelsey.

Psyching each other up
James Chiriboga and Jazailis Gual

James urged his good friend Jazailis to run for Lion Royalty Homecoming Court last fall. He had already applied himself, but Jazailis was on the fence about it. “It just made sense to me,” says James. “She’s friendly, she’s well known across campus. I said, ‘Girl, you need to apply.’”

She did. And when she won, she paused, waiting to hear who else would be named a winner. “When they said James, I ran to him, and we ended up walking together to get crowned,” she says. “We couldn’t believe it.”

It shouldn’t have been too much of a surprise, though. These two had been encouraging each other and getting involved in many of the same things since they first met in an online psychology class their freshman year. “We bonded over the fact that we didn’t really know what we were doing in that class,” says Jazailis. “We’d have individual side chats on Zoom and we’d ask each other,  ‘Does this make sense to you?’ I never felt alone in that class, because James was there.”

Once on campus, they seemingly shared parallel lives. They kept bumping into each other at campus events. They both attended a leadership program through the LeaderShape Institute, and they worked in residential education.

“We were finding ourselves in the same exact spaces without really telling  each other we’d be there,” says Jazailis. They both went for a run one morning —  “at like 5 a.m.,” says James — and there the other was.

“We both want to be successful and we’re both really driven,” says Jazailis.  “I really admire that about James, and he challenges me in that same way.”

Going the distance
Camila Guayasamin and Ashauna Francis

“Whenever we are together, we just laugh,” says Ashauna about being pals with Camila. Their friendship, initially sparked by a conversation in a Zoom chat, faced the ultimate test when, as juniors, the two studied abroad on different continents, with an eight- hour time difference between them.

With Camila in Italy and Ashauna in Chile, they sent each other voice memos over texts, detailing their adventures to each other like personalized podcast episodes. They say no matter where they go next, they will find a way to share their lives with each other. “We’re past the possibility of this friendship fading,” says Camila.

From strangers to sisters
Katie Lutner, Bella La Fata, Dharma Mowatt, Amanda Brogan, and Malica Hot

Hoping to find a sense of community, even online, Katie Lutner decided to rush a sorority her freshman year. She learned about the different chapters and met sisters from multiple organizations online. When she got her bid to Delta Phi Epsilon, she was thrilled. “With them, I felt I could really be true to myself,” she says. Even better: many of the women she was rushing with — Amanda, Bella, Dharma, and Malica — became DPhiEs with her and have since become like family. “I had people who would be there for me,” says Katie. “They shaped who I am today.”

Write to magazine@tcnj.edu and tell us how you found your people at TCNJ.

Photos by Matthew Aaron Callahan, Bill Cardoni, and Caroline Gutman