By Daniel Pagan
The University of Calgary Students’ Union, TriMedia and other campus groups may have a bigger role in next year’s U of C 101. The Office of Student Experience is considering the SU’s proposals for changes to frosh week, such as the resurrection of the inter-faculty games, a clubs fair and an SU-guided tour of MacEwan Students’ Centre.
The SU vice-president events Richard Freeman noted that last year’s U of C 101 orientation was insufficient in educating students about campus life, given that the campus community sessions were in lecture format.
“Campus life should be one of the most important and exciting topics for new students, but given the time constraints, presenters were forced to read off lists of campus activities and facilities with little or no explanation of the points themselves,” he said.
Freeman pointed out that overwhelming students with lists in lectures was not help- ful, making students anything but excited.
OSE associate director Heather Cummings defended the U of C 101 program, pointing out that it was very successful last year. The new format changes helped minimize confusion and were useful in delivering the information to students in a timely manner.
“While we did make many changes, we continued to emphasize a small group, faculty-based, and an interactive experience for our new students,” she said. “Feedback from students and our campus partners was positive.”
Cummings asserted that the criticisms of U of C 101 not doing enough for the SU and TriMedia were based on lingering misperceptions about last year’s orientation week.
“Information about TriMedia was included in the core session on campus involvement as well as the SU presentation and we had felt that through these two exposures, we were supporting TriMedia,” said Cummings.
NUTV executive director Michelle Wong strongly disagreed.
“Last year, U of C 101 gave us no exposure to new students, nothing,” she said. “Last year’s changes really hurt awareness and recruitment for NUTV. I would estimate that we experien-ced a 30 per cent drop in new volunteers.”