By Katie LaDue
Staff Writer

This year’s freshman class is all too familiar with last summer’s orientation slogan, “No debate, Marywood ‘08”. They spent a weekend on campus in July that introduced students to things like dorm life and our college’s food services. This gave every student the brand new experience of living in a college dorm room with other people they had possibly never met before. Suddenly, they were thrust into this brand new world and without even knowing it; that first night would be the beginning of everything. The weekend was filled with group games, small group question sessions, introduction after introduction, and countless icebreakers.

Then in August they were brought in for three more days of orientation before all the upperclassman arrived on campus. These three days consisted of much of the same, but this time they were living in the room they would reside in for the next year with their roommate or roommates. So, in total, this year’s freshman class got six days of orientation and one would assume that would be enough to adequately prepare them for college life, but some disagree. Freshman and Art Therapy major Amanda Button, when asked if she felt the transition had been easy, replied, “No, they were too concerned with games and that was not what we needed.” She was also quoted as saying that she didn’t care much for all the icebreakers; they were a good idea, but some of them made people feel uncomfortable.

Bethany Conway, also a freshman and Art Therapy major, expressed her feelings about orientation by saying, “Having both summer and fall orientation was unnecessary and too much.”

For many, this was way too much orientation time. Several agreed that one would have been sufficient but two felt a little forced. The orientation leaders worked around the clock to make sure all these kids had fun, but many felt there should have been a little more time spent on truly preparing them rather than just trying to help them make friends.