June marked the start of New Student Orientation, a program session required of all first-time freshmen students. But the projected 6,500 incoming IU students this year can expect to have a different New Student Orientation experience than in previous years.
Melanie Payne, New Student Orientation director and Office of First Year Experience senior associate director, said the biggest adjustments logistically were location-based because of the ongoing construction in Wright Residence Hall, the traditional housing location for all incoming students at IU for summer orientation.
“We’re housing students in Union Street, and we’re doing check in there,” Payne said. “We’re also moving our operation offices to Union Street. We’re doing this to accommodate for a certain number of people in a location.”
Construction has also relocated fall class registration from Wells Library to the computer lab near Gresham Food Court at Foster Residence Hall.
“We run a shuttle on the second day of the program to help students get around easier,” Payne said. “When you’re a new student, it’s not as obvious as telling a student to get to the library. Thanks to IU RPS and UITS, we’ve been able to adjust.”
Despite location changes, IU Orientation has kept many of the orientation programs that are considered tradition, such as the Campus Legends Tour, while also adding a few additional programs to help new students.
“We spent this past year doing focus groups, re-looking over messages,” Payne said. “We restructured our program on giving students practical tools. We really spelled out the business of becoming a student: What is the Hoosier experience? What is it like? What’s the community like?”
Payne said the two sides of being a student at IU are the business and the experience. IU New Student Orientation has put more emphasis on connecting career and academic advising, how to use OnCourse, as well as implementing new safety sessions for both parents and students.
Safety sessions were created to help students learn and think about bystander intervention, consensual sex, the Indiana Lifeline Law, as well as the concept of the Culture of Care initiative, a student-based organization aimed at promoting safety and well-being on campus.
Leslie Fasone, assistant dean of Students for Women’s and Gender Affairs, presented and helped assist in shaping the safety sessions along with the director of OASIS, a center aimed toward drug and alcohol prevention among students, Jackie Daniels.
“Throughout the presentation we urge parents to talk to their students about situations that they may encounter in college and how they can respond to them to help create a caring environment at IU,” Fasone said. “We also encourage them to talk about consensual sex and issues of sexual assault with their incoming student.”
By creating potential scenarios the incoming students might encounter, the safety sessions ask accompanying parents to discuss the scenarios with their incoming student and encourage them to be a positive influence on campus.
“The message that we work to convey during the safety session is that we are working to create an environment where IU students have the courage to care,” Fasone said. “We emphasize that parents will often be the ones who students will talk to about problems and ask for help. We hope that students will embrace this concept as they enter IU to create a culture of care on campus.”
Garrett Humphrey, an incoming freshman majoring in biology, went to one of the first week orientation sessions and said he believed orientation this year was very helpful.
“Before orientation, I was excited but a bit nervous,” Humphrey said. “Now, I’m even more excited and a little less nervous. These programs cleared some things up for me that I was kind of worried about.”
Although they were optional, he also chose to attend the safety sessions.
“I believe those sessions are very important,” Humphrey said. “I already had prior knowledge of these topics, but I feel I’m the minority. Safety is a big deal, and I don’t want any of my friends to get hurt because others don’t know these laws.”
Whether the location changes of orientation this year are permanent or will continue next summer is unclear, but Payne said he is excited for the future of the programmatic changes.
“I am thrilled with the opportunity to do these things for new students,” Payne said. “The responses have been really good so far, and I’d love to give credit to the Orientation Team. They’re doing their best to help students.”
