News

Orientation considers changes

In print | April 24, 2008

Members of the class of 2012 will get a new introduction to the college when they arrive on campus in the fall of 2008. The Deans Office and the Orientation Committee are currently hard at work planning Orientation 2008, and they note that there will be significant differences from previous orientations. At the moment, many possible changes are being discussed.

According to OC member Brendan Work ’10, the committee is trying to further incorporate the orientation’s theme into the event itself.

“We want the theme to be incorporated a lot more effectively. If you asked freshman last year what their theme was, they probably couldn’t tell you. Not that we want to make it too cheesy, but we want to have an overall theme that will bring all events together,” Work said.

While the theme has already been chosen, it has yet to be revealed. The OC will be hosting a mixer on May 4 for all the Campus Advisors where the theme will be announced.

A change already known to many current students is the cancellation of the pre-orientation backpacking trip. According to Associate Dean for Student Life Myrt Westphal, the trip was dropped due to its exclusivity.

“Because we can’t make that trip an opportunity available to everybody, we decided to cancel it. As we were thinking about orientation, we asked ourselves, ‘Is that somewhere we want to put our time, energy, and resources into? Something that is not available to everyone?’… We thought that it was important not to privilege some,” Westphal said.

In addition, the OC, which is primarily composed of students and led by Assistant Coordinator of Student Events Paury Flowers, will now be in charge of creating CA groups. According to Work, that duty was formerly left to the Deans Office.

The groups may continue to be made randomly as has been the case in years past, or may be based on a student’s residential location.

“The development of CA groups will try to be as random as possible but we’ll be using identifiers like dorm location and gender as a secondary strategy,” Flowers said in an e-mail.

Westphal, however, stated that CA groups will be drawn from students from two different dorms. Half the group will be from one dorm while the other half will be from another dorm.

“We want to do this so that when you leave your CA group, you know a bunch of people from the same dorm and from another dorm. You can get a comfort level in different dorm and know a variety of people,” Westphal said. “The hope is that CA group connections will last longer.”

Work said that ultimately, the creation of the CA groups is still up in the air. This upcoming Orientation will also include a pre-Orientation component for freshmen athletes, who arrive on campus before the rest of their class.

“We are working on a mini-orientation for the athletes because when the freshmen come, they are in a dorm, and hardly anyone is there. Yes, they have their team and practice, but they don’t have a lot of people to interact with when they’re not with the team in practice. We wanted to do welcoming activities and give safety tips,” Westphal said.

“Sometimes an RA would arrive on a hall six hours later than an athlete would. Who is supposed to guide them around? We will get a list and know who’s coming in so that we know to greet them and check on them. They will have people to show them the ropes,” Westphal said.

“We hope to offer wellness activities throughout the week so that most students can attend something, be it a relaxing walk in the Crum or a meditation circle in a tuck away corner of campus. We want new students to have opportunities from the very beginning to gain mind-body-spirit health so that they can be the best students they can be,” Flowers said in an e-mail.

While the OC and the Deans Office have yet to finalize all the details surrounding next year’s Orientation, many ideas have been tossed around and are being considered.

In the future, events more significant to acclimating the students to academic and social life at Swarthmore, Orientation 2008 will have more emphasis on wellness than past orientations.

According to Westphal, possible activities centered on wellness include yoga or tai chi on Parrish Beach, opportunities to sample physical education classes and activities with healthy snacks and cooking.

“I think that thinking about orientation is an ongoing process, so we’re making some smaller changes now, but I think that fairly soon, we will probably think, ‘Do we want to do things radically different? What are we trying to achieve, and what’s the best way to achieve it?’” Westphal said.