On Sept. 30, SDSU’s Roblox users assembled at the Mediterranean Garden. By noon, more than 50 students formed a massive circle in the grass.
Co-presidents Tayler Donaldson and Malia Widman, as well as officers Ava O’Neil, Vanity Teng and Sora Nguyen, introduced themselves before encouraging everyone to log in to play Total Roblox Drama.
The game is an online recreation of the Canadian television game show “Total Drama Island,” in which players compete against one another through various challenges, forming alliances and strategizing to prevent being voted out.
“If this club had existed when I was a freshman, I would have joined it,” Donaldson said. “I would have had so many more friends than I have now, and I just want to get people a place [to build friendships].”
Donaldson and Widman have been friends since freshman year, frequently playing Roblox together in their dorm. In their senior year, they decided to organize a meetup due to not being involved on campus much prior.
“We would play Roblox together, so that was one of the main things I wanted to make a club about,” Widman said. “A lot of other universities were doing it too. So I was like, ‘Why not do it now?’”
Students gather in a circle at the Mediterranean Garden on the noon of Wednesday, Sept. 30,
2026, in San Diego, Calif. (Jordan Faris)
The idea for a meetup fell into place on Sept. 21, when Widman posted a TikTok asking if students would be interested in joining a “Roblox club” at SDSU. The post garnered over 3,000 likes, showing high demand for club membership and officer positions. The following day, Widman made an Instagram account and a GroupMe server.
The inaugural meeting garnered anticipation for future meetups. Donaldson and Widman promised to fix many of the issues students encountered, such as a faulty Wi-Fi connection and the lack of private servers.
Donaldson and Widman plan to turn the community into an officially recognized student organization once the university’s spring semester applications open on Dec. 1. If the group receives the recognized status in spring 2027, it can get funding, a dedicated classroom space for meetings and the ability to design merchandise for club members.
Manuela Sagmani, a freshman and commuter at SDSU, had seen the first announcement on TikTok. Before “Roblox club,” she said she felt lost on campus and without a community to belong to.
“It’s really hard to find people who are actually pretty similar to you on more than just an academic level,” Sagmani said.
For freshmen and transfer students, “belonging uncertainty” is a common experience. The term refers to students encountering feelings of insecurity during times of transition, according to Maithreyi Gopalan of the Teaching and Learning Lab.
Gopalan’s investigation of The Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study revealed that students who weren’t involved with the community had lower grades and decreased motivation to learn. The most severe cases were from racial minority groups or members of the LGBTQ+ community.
For students who want to join a club, however, many on campus can be intimidating. The “Roblox club” seeks to mitigate that feeling through a casual environment, for anyone can log in through their phone or laptop and play along.
“A lot of the clubs [at SDSU] are academics-based or [fitness-based], but there are not enough clubs where you can let go of all your responsibilities for an hour,” said Donaldson.
While Sagmani was unable to make it to the first gathering, the formation of the Roblox meetup inspired her to create a friend group within the GroupMe server, where they played games outside of Starbucks at the Conrad Prebys Aztec Student Union.
“[SDSU] has a lot of people who also want to make friends on campus,” Widman said. “The campus is pretty big, so, [the Roblox meetup] is a smaller community to make friends here on campus … Roblox has any kind of game for anyone to play.”
Roblox clubs across the nation have made a mark on other universities, including the University of California, Davis; Baylor University in Waco, Texas and Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
Shortly after the creation of their Instagram account, Donaldson and Widman were added to a large group chat involving other collegiate Roblox communities.
Donaldson and Widman are excited for future collaborations with the network of collegiate Roblox clubs. Locally, they hope to play Roblox alongside Aztec Paws, SDSU’s furry club and Roblox + RBXDev at the University of California, San Diego.
The SDSU Roblox meetup will occur every Wednesday at the Mediterranean Garden from noon to 1 p.m. and Fridays at the grass area in front of North Education from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m.