Forget about partying during O-Week

By Melanie Bethune, September 11 2014 —

During the Orientation Week resource fair, a bewildered first year passing by the Gauntlet booth told me “it’s just like in the movies” when asked what she thought of the festivities. That’s not a coincidence.

Orientation exists to prove to new students that university can indeed be just like the movies. The hip campus newspaper can hand out papers across from joyful students singing Pharrell Williams’ Happy. Next to them, members of Queers on Campus spread their message of diversity. A women’s rights group hands out condoms to passing students.

We are all united in solidarity under the banner of a cartoon dinosaur and an optimistic theme of making change — or at least making something of our lives. We are all supposedly unique, but underneath it we are all Dinos.

The entire structure of O-Week is designed to highlight what being an ideal Dino means. Over the course of the week, students are told that Dinos are changemakers and loyal members of their faculties. New Dinos hear
induction speeches and encouraging words from friendly upper-year students.  Every word is delivered with a smile and a cheer.

Orientation is designed to be big, bright, loud and proud. This isn’t always a bad thing. However, O-Week is a filter for what incoming university students get to see on campus. It glosses over controversial issues with buttery smoothness, prohibiting discussion forums about social issues while actively pushing fun events such as video dances and football games at students.

O-Week is most effective when students can choose what part of university they want to interact with. One morning, students had the opportunity to meet professors from their own programs and ask questions. The next afternoon we had dozens of students walking through the Gauntlet’s upstairs office, asking questions about the opportunities that exist for campus involvement. Once O-Week is over, a smiling upper-year student doesn’t walk you from one activity to the next. If you want to get involved, you have to make that choice and seek out those opportunities.

Looking back on my own experience with O-Week last year, it’s these sorts of sessions and faculty specific events that left a resounding impact on my university experience. Somehow, they’re hidden in the schedule under the hype of bigger and brighter events and the distant roaring of the Dinos. Due to scheduling, students can only attend a select few of these elective sessions, even though they’re arguably more useful than any football game or pep rally. We force students to choose between things like learning about finance management, campus media and wellness on campus. In reality, they give you more information on what university is like than most higher-billed O-Week events.

So many parts of O-Week feel like not-so-subtle attempts at trying to prove to students that university is like a more fun version of high school. Don’t get me wrong, I love fun. But there comes a point where we need to show new students the reality of university and set them up for success the best way that we can. MuchMusic Video Dances and football games should not be how new students are introduced to campus when they have full academic course loads and new stresses only a week away.

Let’s stop trying to comfort new students with fond idealizations of high school and instead focus on orientating them to the new world of university. Step out of a John Hughes movie and into reality.