Changes to academic calendar to result in shorter freshman orientation

Freshman orientation will be a day shorter next year as a result of the changes to Thanksgiving break the University faculty unanimously approved at a previous meeting on April 1. This abridgment of freshman orientation is the result of the start of classes being pushed one day earlier, from Thursday, Sept. 12 to Wednesday, Sept. 11.

Pre-orientation activities will remain unaffected. International Orientation will remain scheduled for Aug. 28–31, according to Director of the Davis International Center Jacqueline Leighton.

Outdoor Action and Community Action will also remain unaffected and will take place from Sept. 1 to Sept. 6.

Freshman orientation events will be affected minimally, according to Senior Associate Dean of the College Claire Fowler. “It used to be, until several years ago, that we used to need Wednesday to do course registration,” she explained. “We realized we can do course selections all on Tuesday, but Wednesday was just left on the freshman orientation calendar. It was doable to cut Wednesday out.”

The few events that would have taken place on Wednesday will be rescheduled to occur during other days during freshman orientation. “The Way You Move,” a play sponsored by the Sexual Harassment/Assault Advising, Resources and Education Program and the Residential Education Program, will be moved from its usual Wednesday time slot to Tuesday, Fowler said.

In addition, Labyrinth Books will be open late on the Tuesday before classes start to accommodate for the lost day of freshman orientation that students would otherwise have had to purchase books, she said.

Starting classes a day earlier will ensure students have the opportunity to attend all of their classes the first week of school, which will give them a sense of how they like their classes, Fowler said. However, the add/drop deadline will also be moved a day earlier, Fowler added.

The decision to remove a day from freshman orientation in the event that Thanksgiving break were to be changed was discussed prior to the official change, according to OA Director Rick Curtis ’79.

The Orientation and Implementation Committee, coordinated by Associate Dean of Undergraduate Students Maria Flores-Mills, met throughout the year and discussed recommendations for what would be the best course of action if the calendar did in fact change, Curtis said.

Flores-Mills explained that there were a lot of factors that went into the decision to remove the last day from freshman orientation.

“Most of it was based on the fact that the two pre-orientation programs, Outdoor Action and Community Action, had already put out their dates to the students who were admitted through Early Action,” Flores-Mills explained. “And in order to particularly with Outdoor Action recalibrate routes for about 80 to 100 individual trips from five-day trips to four-day trips would have been an enormous undertaking in a short period of time.”

Bringing students to campus a day earlier was also considered, Flores-Mills added, but logistically it proved to be nearly impossible.

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A USG survey conducted in 2011 indicated that the majority of undergraduates were in favor of including Wednesday in Thanksgiving break. “I’m glad we were able to try out a calendar change that was so overwhelmingly popular with the undergraduates,” Fowler said.