When I was thinking of #student_lounge there were no other live student channels.
When I started to get this going, some others popped up also and some a little after. Guess other people thought we need a student channel too. By then I felt that I wouldn't join them because I had put all this work in setting up a homepage, motivating people...we also had some special people. We were the best. They could join us. Lately I notice a few of us are being harried by daily life and have had less time to be on the channel.

I have met some good people. The main message is to support and lurk on channels that you think are important. There are plenty channal managers with their private fiefdoms. Too few people to fill these channels. You see channels only grow by nice people being there, not by them having a quiet bot on the channel. I myself will go and support #student. You are welcome and encoraged to meet me there. But you are also free to chose #university, #collegechat #Studentzone (seems to be a bunch of teenage kiwis here). or *uh* *cough* #college. I will work on transitioning the homepage into my personal page as well as a guide to student IRC channels and some crusty ranting and raving about lamers. After its up I'll have links from the old page and here going there. I'll even keep the links of all the other loungers who had homepages

The bottomline message is to log in to channels you think are a good idea even if they are empty because it is people staying and being friendly that makes them grow. To my personal page
To Student IRC channels on the Undernet