Editorial: Orientation could better use campus resources

By: Our Opinion

Posted: 6/15/09

Thinking back on freshman orientation, what is it that you remember? Is it hot weather, rushed information sessions and silly plays? For many students, orientation was not exactly the pre-college experience that they were expecting.

But summer orientation is only one part of a three-step orientation process. According to Maria Sedotti, coordinator for UConn Orientation Services, the purpose of summer orientation is to take care of administrative business. That's why we found ourselves stuck learning how to use NetIDs, Peoplesoft and register for courses. The next step of orientation is Husky WOW, which is the first weekend of school. This is when students truly begin their college experience. The orientation process is completed with a First Year Experience class, where students learn how to use the library, and if lucky, the Dairy Bar.

For many students, summer orientation tends to be a big letdown. Due to safety concerns, participants are kept under close supervision and not allowed to leave the group at all. They are led around campus learning things that they will inevitably forget by the time they arrive at the end of August, where they may or may not participate in the Husky WOW activities.

There are several things that could be changed about summer orientation to make it more effective. The biggest problem with orientation is the timing. Held from the beginning of the summer until the start of July, orientation takes place at this time for many reasons, including the school calendar, the availability of advisors and the conference housing schedule. This should be something to keep in mind as UConn's academic calendar is determined in the future. If orientation were held closer to the start of school, the information would remain fresh in new students' minds. They will also be out of high school by that time and ready to go out on their own, allowing students to explore the campus themselves with fewer liabilities for the university.

Another thing that could help orientation bring college to life would be the opportunity to focus on individual majors. But it is too bad that the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has the largest amount of majors and programs, which makes it very difficult to give its students any individual attention during orientation. They do, hold an open house at a different time, but it is not an opportunity to get a good picture of your major.

A lot of planning and work goes into orientation on behalf of the university, and orientation does do the job it is meant to - getting business out of the way. But there are many different things that orientation could accomplish if the resources were available.