Dining hall food, new faces, and dorm life - these are only some aspects of college life which lay in store for the class of 2005. To address the transition from high school to college, administrators and faculty have revamped orientation with a host of new events, culminating in a dinner which will bring together the entire class of 2005.
These changes come in conjunction with the inauguration of Tufts' 12th president, Larry Bacow, who will make his first official address to the Tufts community at today's matriculation ceremony.
"It's a kickoff to a year that has a new president, Tufts' sesquicentennial, and the class of 2005; a good time to feel good about the University," said Dean of Students Bruce Reitman. "It's Tufts pride. We want to give students a sense of belonging to a particular class."
The most significant change has transformed the first night's dining hall meal into a celebratory dinner being held tonight in the Gantcher Center. In the past, students ate with their individual advising groups at staggered times, seating half of the class in Carmichael and the rest in Dewick, leaving them without the opportunity to interact with the other half of their peers.
"We want to create a sense of community as soon as possible," Dean of First-Year Students Jean Herbert said. "It's something we've wanted for a very long time."
The dinner, which will feature speeches by the president and other administrators, will be followed immediately by the traditional Light on the Hill ceremony, which was previously held on the Friday following move-in.
All members of the Class of 2005 will also receive t-shirts designed for their class tomorrow night.
Funding for the Gantcher event and several other new orientation programs came from the reallocation money already designated for orientation activities. "Orientation is already expensive, so the costs were shuffled," Reitman said.
Although the orientation committee has not calculated the final costs of this week's activities, Orientation Co-Coordinator Moira Poe (LA '01) said that they will probably come in under the new budget allocated for orientation events, since she worked closely with the Office of Student Activities when developing the programming. But the additional celebratory events, created mainly for the sesquicentennial, will raise the cost from years past.
The higher cost "is probably more with the anniversary and new initiatives with class identity," said Poe. "This year is just going to be crazy."
Students criticized past orientations for not bringing together the entire class through activities, and the Gantcher event is meant to remedy this.
"All [post-orientation evaluations] indicated that there should be more done for class identity, unity, and school spirit," Reitman said. "Getting the whole class together in Gantcher on Wednesday night is directly responsive to that."
Herbert speculated that this will become an annual tradition but said that the University must first weigh whether such an event is worth the cost. The University once attempted to bring together an entire class in Cousens Gym, according to Herbert, but the event failed because the gym lacked warmth and acoustics.
The 68,289 square foot Gantcher Center, a more versatile space, was specifically designed as a multi-purpose facility with a state-of-the-art sound system to enable the University to host large amounts of people in one place.
Administrators hope to make better use of the Center in the future as a means of uniting entire Tufts classes, such an event to welcome back this year's seniors which is still being planned.
"Matriculation, graduation - those are the only times an entire class is together," Herbert said. "Having something that's a celebration of their first night here - that's the tone we want to set."
The budget for preparing food for the first night was used to pay for the celebratory dinner. After receiving quotes from seven different caterers, Poe found it cheaper to hire an outside caterer for the Gantcher dinner than using Dining Services.
"I don't think the [total] costs were dramatically different - people had to eat last year anyway," Poe said.
The elimination of some of the poorly-attended events from past orientation programs, such as Monte Carlo night and Midnight Madness in Cousens Gym, also helped to consolidate funds.
