Michelle MarkNow that everyone is officially back from the winter break, and add/drop is upon us, it’s time to fully settle into the new semester.
But something always feels less exciting about winter term. There’s snow on the ground, it’s cold, and the days are shorter. In all honesty, winter semester totally lacks the joy and wonder that the fall holds. You could argue that the overall lack of excitement is due to the weather, but it’s a problem that could easily be remedied if a second Week of Welcome was implemented in January.
Sure, right now we have AntiFreeze, which ran from Jan. 4 until Jan. 9. If you missed it, teams of 10 people ran around campus last week participating in a bunch of zany challenges in hopes of winning a ski trip. 2016 saw 29 teams register, totalling around 290 participants. Participating requires the joint necessity of having 10 friends and paying an entrance fee to join in the festivities. It’s not exactly the most inclusive event, especially considering it’s the only event in January that contributes to getting students more involved on campus. We need more campus-wide events to keep students excited for winter semester.
Most notably, there should be a second round of beer gardens. Yes, it’s cold outside. But sell Bailey’s and hot chocolate instead of coolers, encourage people to bundle up, and throw a fun party in the great outdoors. Host a snowman making contest and do some shots off an ice ramp. Campus can be gorgeous in the winter, so why not turn it into a fun place to hang out for a couple of days?
Students first attending the U of A in the winter semester are unable to attend fall orientation. There’s no group of enthusiastic volunteers to show them around campus and no way to easily meet people in their faculty. Orientation isn’t necessary, but it gives people a way to ease into university before the semester’s madness starts.
There isn’t a Clubs Fair to help them interact either. This week there have been some clubs tabling in SUB, but it’s nowhere near the number of clubs you see in fall semester. And as a student group, there isn’t the opportunity to table unless you plan ahead, and even then, there’s extremely limited space in SUB, making it difficult to book tables at the best of times, let alone recruiting season. Making a dedicated January Clubs Fair would give more groups the space to interact with new students anxious to meet people.
A second Clubs Fair wouldn’t just be for new students though — there are always students who don’t get involved with clubs until second semester once the initial shock of university has worn off. Face to face interaction is extremely valuable when choosing a club and people will be more willing to pursue a group after a positive interaction with a recruiter. Plus it minimizes the intimidation of walking into a club meeting for the first time to a room full of people you don’t know and who aren’t expecting you. Sure, clubs can say they are welcoming as much as they want, but sometimes that isn’t enough for the average introvert.
These points can be seen as babying new students, and I understand that. You’re in university now, so you should be able to go out of your way to meet people and figure out campus. But orientation isn’t about just making first years feel safe and warm, it integrates a feeling of camaraderie and excitement for the coming semester for the rest of us too. Seeing those fresh-faced first years brings back memories of when school was fun. The beer gardens are a fun way to enjoy spending time on campus before school gets crazy. And Clubs Fair can give ideas about new experiences to pursue, be it learning about going into medicine from the Pre-Med club or learning that you can pursue journalism by writing for The Gateway without getting a journalism degree.
A happy, activity fuelled campus is the key to getting students interested in what’s going on at the U of A. We’re a commuter campus, and the way to change that is to offer more events to make the school seem like a better place to invest time than The Rack on Whyte. And with elections right around the corner, the Students’ Union should have more of an interest in getting campus interested in its surroundings.
