LETTER: Orientation demeans frosh maturity

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by David Rhodes

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The editors are dead-on in their criticism of the O-Week coordinators' handling of the matriculation ceremony ( Thresher , Aug. 25).

I would submit that the problems of jack regulation, limitations on free speech and arbitrary disciplinary action speak to a more fundamental problem with orientation week: the condescending, almost Victorian attitude which returning students and some members of the administration project toward their new neighbors.

An advisor customarily refers to his advisees as "my freshmen," as if the new students were lemming-like dunces dependent on the guidance of a seasoned upperclassman for life-giving support.

In reality, the new students are not nearly this far removed from the upperclassmen's level of maturity.

The freshmen came here expecting to escape a measure of parental authority, not to find new parental role models in "their" advisors.

The parental attitude further extends itself to orientation sessions on alcohol and other university policies.

Some of the O-Week Gods -- the same people who endlessly refer to "their" freshmen -- have an almost apoplectic attitude toward the venerable O-Week tradition of the Purity Test, a 100-point honor-system examination now so hopelessly overlaid with the language of political correctness that it is almost impossible to figure out whether the questions refer to sex, drugs or rock 'n' roll.

But even with the test's references to "Members of the Preferred Sex" and other terms one wouldn't actually use in bed, many O-Week leaders fear it could expose the naive freshman to the evils of sex, alcohol and other bad, bad, bad things.

Could it be that the purity test is a harmless college right-of-passage meant to separate the men from the boys (sorry, the Members of the Prefered Sex from the Less Inhibited Members of the Prefered Sex)?

Could it be that many freshmen have far lower test scores than their supposedly seasoned advisors, the very same advisors who have talked down to them all week about drinking and other vices?

No, it could not be, the O-Week Gods say. Each freshman is a shapeless ball of innocent clay, waiting to be molded by the university's worldly students, enlightened faculty and informed administration. If they step out of line and become creative -- say, at matriculation -- they are to be stomped into the ground and fined.

Beware, evil doers, wherever you are! The O-Week Gods are watching.

Or, as Orwell put it in Animal Farm , "some animals are more equal than others," and the freshmen are most certainly more equal than the O-Week Gods.

Get a life, people. The real orientation takes place in the "wet season" of the first weekend of school. And at the end of October, when the first grades go home.

David Rhodes

WRC '97

This item appeared in the Opinion section of the September 1, 1995 issue.

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