Only one short year ago I was an incoming freshman—soon to be alone and already scared. This is where New Student Orientation is supposed to help you.
On the whole, NSO is a good thing. It is well organized and well funded, and it helps freshmen meet a few new people, maybe even make a friend or two. I will readily admit: I had a good NSO experience. I cannot help question, however, some of the practices used to “welcome” incoming students to Georgetown.
I walked out of the parking garage with the suitcases containing all of my worldly posessions only to be immediately assaulted by a group of students screaming “HOYA SAXA! WELCOME TO GEORGETOWN!” Call me a grouch, taking issue with these jovial, soon-to-be-kindred spirits who are welcoming me to the place they passionately, almost to a cultish level, know and love, but I hated my NSO welcome.
I think part of the problem may come from the fact that the welcomers are often in groups of at least four, and as anyone who has taken a sociology or psychology course knows when a group grows, the cheering and yelling have the potential to increase substantially.
This is why people go to sports games—you can see the players just as well on the television, but it is much more fun to yell and jump around with a bunch of other equally excited people. The only difference is that the front gates are the arena, and incoming students are the spectacle.
I did not enjoy being a spectacle for NSO staff to scream at. I remember recoiling in fear, wondering why these people were screaming at me—I do not subscribe to the oft practiced collegiate theory that more noise means more fun. Maybe I’m the exception, but I’d prefer they help me move my stuff, point me in the right direction, or maybe hand me a map. The cries of “WELCOME TO GEORGETOWN!” sounded a lot like “GAWK AT THE FRESHMAN!”
Even stranger is how these groups of screamers act while they have no targets (I witnessed this from a safe position in a friend’s Village B apartment). A group of energetic NSO staffers crowded around an iPod speaker, dancing around, bopping their heads to the slightly dated pop music that they tend to choose as their anthems.
I thought this was strange. An older gentleman walking by clearly felt the same, as he stopped and stared briefly at them.
I was so intrigued by this practice that I asked Patrick Lenihan (COL ‘10), one of this year’s leaders of NSO, a few questions about the whole practice of welcoming new students to Georgetown. He told me that NSO tries to reach out to students in different ways, one of which is the cheering at campus entrances, along with other quieter ways like mellow conversations at Leo’s.
Personally, I’d prefer the quieter, one-on-one approach. A few friends likewise felt embarrassed by the screaming during freshman move-in.
So my message to NSO, specifically the highly audible contingent, is to maybe tone down the initial welcome to campus. Greeters are fine, but a big group of older students, no matter how cheerful, appears threatening. And most sweaty, luggage-toting, parent flanked freshmen aren’t quite looking for an audience as they make their baby steps into college life.
