This year, incoming freshmen had a slightly different experience than the rest of us remember from SO Continued. Moving in early in the week, freshmen spent their time taking full- and half-day trips. The standard freshman olympics competition remained the same, as did convocation on Sunday. The major difference I noted was in the post-scavenger hunt downtown extravaganza, now called the Communiversity welcome celebration. In the past, freshmen and their RAs would meet at Riverside Park, where they would feast on hot dogs and cheeseburgers, compete in spirit contests with other groups of freshmen, and watch their new classmates sing karaoke. This year, food was served at 12:30, but the karaoke was missing. Seeing a poster advertising the celebration’s time as 2–6 pm, I arrived at 3 pm and made my way down River Street to the park, which was empty. And under construction. My companions, feeling unsatiated at having only free ice cream and popcorn, and not free hot dogs or chili (which were specifically requested), were quite disappointed, as was I.
The festivities did include many things foreign to past welcome picnics. Part of River Street was blocked off, leaving room for tents offering free snacks, Fly 92 paraphernalia, snacks from a local cafe, and the opportunity to send flowers to new friends in the dorm. It seems as though this year many local businesses were involved, which is a step in the right direction for a communiversity celebration. The entertainment was comprised mainly of performances by Odadaa! and Conehead Buddha, with banter (and a raffle of RPI merchandise) from Fly 92 DJ Ray sprinkled in.
While on paper this sounds like a great way to welcome freshmen to RPI, the execution of the event was lacking. Perhaps without a continual buffet many freshmen took an ice cream in one hand and a popcorn in the other and left. Interestingly, there were a lot more people from the community there this year, and this group combined with RPI staff and upperclassmen comprised the majority of the crowd, at least while I was there.
Children present were entertained by a clown on stilts and a man on a unicycle, and many seemed to enjoy the musical entertainment, but there wasn’t really anything aimed at the generic college freshman. My recommendation for the future would be to have a "battle of the bands"-type set added to the musical entertainment. This would provide freshmen and others the opportunity to see upperclassmen perform their own music, which is more likely to appeal to the average 18-year-old.
Overall, with a group of friends this welcome ceremony could be fun. However, if one is devoid of spirit, hungry, or not into either of the two very different music genres, the communiversity welcome celebration probably warranted about 20 minutes of your time. I think that the Institute has laid a decent foundation, though, for future celebrations, provided more food and better-targeted entertainment are brought in for the upcoming years.
On the bright side, the weather was beautiful and both musical groups were very good at what they did, and did have a good-sized cluster of fans. Plus, for probably the first time, it seemed like the community was comfortable joining the university in a celebration.
