Where did you meet your closest friends at Rensselaer? Where did you make memories, relationships, and leave legacies before the academic year even began when you were a freshman? I’ll tell you where: at Student Orientation and at Navigating Rensselaer and Beyond through the Office of the First-Year Experience.
The Office of the First-Year Experience was the link to the senior year of high school when you enrolled in the Institute, sending countless letters and ensuring that the transition from high school to college was smooth and effortless. Looking back on it now, FYE did an amazing job and truly shaped my first semester at RPI.
During my SO, I met amazing people with whom I bonded and am still very good friends with. I really feel that my time spent on campus in July getting to know other freshman and meeting upperclassman made me feel more comfortable with the idea of moving away from home, and to my new life at college.
I had the opportunity to move in early in August and take part in an overnight trip for Habitat for Humanity. The fact that I got to help build a house and leave a part of me in Troy was amazing to me. In addition to that, one of my roommates did the same overnight trip, and that is where we truly bonded and became good friends.
The events of NRB allowed students to see Troy, get involved in clubs that they would further pursue in the semester, and gave a showcase of what Rensselaer had to offer to its students. In addition to that, when we came back for NRB, students already knew each other from SO and were already making Rensselaer’s campus their own.
So far, everything about the Office of the First-Year Experience seems to be wonderful, right? Well it is, but here’s the catch. The Office of the First-Year Experience is having its budget cut, resulting in a decrease in quality in its best programs—Student Orientation and Navigating Rensselaer and Beyond.
Here’s what gets me: students have their best experiences during those weeks in the summer before classes start, and countless more students give back to the Office of the First-Year Experience by working for it later on. So my question is, why fix something that isn’t broken? I know the Institute doesn’t have tons of money floating around to spend on FYE and its programs, but taking away from something that has been nationally recognized and acclaimed, and is an integral part of freshman experiences, is not the answer.
There have been rumors of cutting the overnight trips that are part of NRB, and I am personally very opposed to that. That is one of the first major contributions I made to this campus and where I met my best friend. Why in the world would you take away from that experience?
I am against cutting the programs themselves, but in the interest of finance and saving money, I think a better approach than taking away integral aspects from SO and NRB is in making alterations. Take a survey of which events were rated higher than others, and get rid of those which do not have a high following. In addition to that, activities that directly feed into future clubs like the plays and the a capella groups, for example, should not be cut because they epitomize what FYE is trying to create: affinity and school spirit. I think before vital programs are cut, all aspects of the freshman experience should be looked at and altered accordingly. Like I said earlier, “If it ain’t broke, why fix it?”
