The sorority Alpha Chi Omega celebrated its annual campaign to bring recognition about relationships to college campuses through its “Healthy Relationships Week” in February. The organization’s national philanthropy focuses on promoting healthy dating and partners with loveisrespect.org in a social media campaign to bring awareness of domestic abuse.

This campaign caught my attention because our society and the media both focus so much on broken relationships and the abuse, fear and manipulation that can result, I found it refreshing to see a national group focus on building healthy relationships rather than harping on the broken ones.

After reviewing the details of the campaign and seeing that most of the activities supporting it revolve around social media and raising awareness, I realized there are more practical ways people can promote building good relationships.

Students have to learn how to successfully maintain all types of relationships (including those with friends, family, significant others, professors, roommates, classmates and employers) and all of these connections can intermix and be deemed healthy or unhealthy. Because of this, learning how to build good relationships should be highly emphasized for college students. It all comes down to knowing what type of relationship is appropriate.

Students should be learning the tools for how to construct relationships in their classes, jobs and clubs. These tools, such as good communication, adaptability and knowing what is acceptable behavior in a particular relationship, are things that are formed through experience, not simply awareness. For example, by working at an on-campus job I have learned not only how to interact professionally with my boss and customers but also how to have relationships with other student workers who have a manager position. In this case, friendship is acceptable, but there also has to be a form of respect because the other student worker has a higher position.

Building a relationship of any sort is a delicate process, and the right forms of communication and interaction are essential because relationships impact every aspect of our lives. The values loveisrespect.org lists on its website as being part of a healthy relationship include speaking up, respecting your partner, compromising, being supportive and respecting each other’s privacy. Although these qualities are specifically listed on the website as necessary for dating relationships, they can and should be applied to every type of relationship.

On an official blog post from LinkedIn, in part of its “Welcome to the Workforce” series, writer Samuel Easton relays the irony that often occurs when building relationships in college.

“At a time in your life when relationships have never been more important, they’ve never been harder to build,” Easton writes. “From what I’ve seen, building relationships early on is the key to kicking off a successful career.”

College can be a time when people don’t pay attention to the effects of their relationships with others. It’s difficult to understand that how you treat people can have a ripple effect. This is why it is simply not enough to provide awareness about what can happen in unhealthy relationships.

I think delivering practical knowledge of how to do this deserves more attention on college campuses because building good relationships is crucial when transitioning after college. Students should be encouraged to use the values and material they are taught in classes to build relationships and learn how to interact with different types of people. Doing this, even on a trial-and-error basis, is what will make students successful in determining what is appropriate in various “real-world” situations.

Claire Noack can be reached at noac8702@stthomas.edu.