For many students at the College, leaving the Sawyer 24-hour room during the wee hours of the morning is not an unfamiliar experience. In fact, late nights are common for college students nationwide. Researchers from the University of Michigan found that approximately 70 percent of American college students get less than eight hours of sleep per night on average. To learn more about sleep health on campus, the Record surveyed students and found that rates of sleep deprivation and sleep medication are consistent with nationwide patterns.

The survey received 332 responses, a response rate of 15.8 percent. Fifty-nine percent of respondents self-identified as female, 6 percent self-identified as non-binary, and 36 percent self-identified as male. Seniors were slightly overrepresented, making up 29 percent of responses, with juniors at 24 percent, sophomores at 21 percent, and first-years making up 26 percent. 16 percent of survey responses self-identified with two or more races, 64 percent as white, non-Hispanic, 7 percent as Hispanic/Latino, 10 percent as Asian, non-Hispanic, and 2.3 percent as Black or African-American, non-Hispanic.

Students reported an average of 7.18 hours of sleep per weeknight, slightly higher than the nationwide average of 7 hours, according to the CDC. Overall, 75.7 percent said they sleep fewer than eight hours on weeknights, and 22 percent reported getting fewer than seven hours. The survey did not collect data on weekend sleep.

Rowan Brown ’29 said that he believes students’ general lack of sleep at the College reflects the competitive nature of their postgraduate ambitions. “As Williams students, we’re at the gates of lots of shiny baubles: law, high finance, and medical degrees,” he said in an interview with the Record. “People don’t want to mess that up or waste an opportunity. Sleep ends up getting sacrificed because there are lots of possibilities here.”

While Leah Welner ’29 sleeps for an average of eight hours on weeknights, she has observed wide variation among her peers. “A few of my friends usually get a lot of sleep, like up to 10 hours per night,” she said. “Some will pull one to two all-nighters a week.”

“It varies a lot,” she added. “Sometimes we’ll meet for breakfast and somebody says, ‘I got one hour of sleep,’ and the others are like, ‘We got nine.’”

The survey also found that 31 percent of students at the College use medication, supplements, or substances to fall asleep. A 2017 study by researchers from Syracuse University and Yale University found that 33 percent of college students at an unspecified university in the Northeast used over-the-counter or prescription medications to help them fall asleep. The Record did not find that any of the collected demographic variables — race, gender, financial aid, student athlete, and international status — were significant predictors of insomnia.

Angie Mejia Sierra ’28 said they and many of their friends struggle with insomnia and take sleep medication. “I think the stress on campus leaves a lot of students having problems with sleeping in general,” they said.

Jon Brumfield ’29, a non-traditional student who has regularly taken melatonin and Benadryl to fall asleep, said he began having trouble sleeping at the College. “It usually takes me about two hours of just laying in bed, just tossing and turning before I would even think about going to sleep,” he said. “I’d say it’s been triggered by Williams.” Mejia also reported taking a long time to fall asleep.

Brumfield also said that rigorous academics contribute to his sleep difficulties, especially as he adjusts to the academic atmosphere of the College. “[At the College], there’s an expectation to outperform others and to assign more work than is possible to complete within a day,” he said. “Sleepless nights are common among my group of non-traditional students… Students like myself have to stay up later and … wake up earlier … just so [we] can stay at the same pace as everybody else, and complete all the work.”

To investigate possible risk factors for sleep loss, the Record fit a multiple regression model to predict self-reported average weeknight sleep hours. Five demographic variables — race, athlete status, financial aid status, international status, and gender — were used as predictors. Model results showed that Black or African American, non-Hispanic, and Hispanic or Latino students reported getting less sleep than their white and Asian peers, holding other variables in the model constant. The results met the five percent significance level, meaning there is a less than five percent chance of observing results at least this extreme if there is no true difference between the groups. However, only nine Black students and 23 Latino students responded to the survey, so the results, while statistically significant, are unstable. The average sleep hours for Black and Latino survey respondents were 6.06 and 6.71, respectively. In contrast, the average sleep hours for white and Asian students were 7.24 and 7.13, respectively.

Sara Fevrier ’28, who self-identifies as Afro-Latinx, said she receives an average of four to five hours of sleep on weeknights. Although she did not fill out the survey, Fevrier said she has observed disparities in sleep among students of different racial and ethnic backgrounds. “[Black and Latinx students] are not sleeping,” she said.

Fevrier partly attributed her lack of sleep to the sociopolitical challenges Black and Latino students face, while balancing rigorous academics at the College. “You’re dealing with what’s going on politically, dealing with what’s going on with your identity,” she said. “I’m [not] like these other students who can just not care about what’s going on in the world because they’re going to be fine.”

Mejia Sierra, who self-identified as Afro-Latinx, also spoke about how their identity is related to their sleep. “I feel as though a lot of the students of color on campus feel like they don’t get as much support from … the broader Williams community or Williams administration against types of hostility and bigotry against them, which does lead to a lot more stress, a lot more anxiety,” they said. “And that just means it’s way harder to sleep.” According to Harvard Medical School, stress can raise the risk of insomnia.

For students across demographic groups, stress has emerged as a common reason for their lack of sleep. Aurora Lewis ’28 pointed to a campus culture that prioritizes productivity over rest. “I feel like there’s a pressure not to sleep, to keep doing work,” she said.

Correction: A previous version of this article mistakenly stated that seniors made up 32 percent of survey responses, juniors 29 percent, sophomores 24 percent, and first-years 21 percent. Seniors made up 29 percent of responses, juniors 24 percent, sophomores 21 percent, and first-years made up 26 percent. This article was updated on Apr at 8:29 p.m. with the correct rates.