Letters have gone out this month to all 496 incoming first-years informing them about their orientation trip assignments. On Aug. 22, after spending the night together as a class in Farley Field House, the students will disperse throughout the state — or as the case may be, stay in Brunswick — in small groups to hike, paddle, farm, do yoga, bicycle, study science, surf, volunteer, and get to know each other and Maine.
This is the first time in the three-decade-old tradition of orientation trips that all first-years will go on one of the 51 expeditions Bowdoin is offering this summer. Previously, orientation trips were voluntary, but the College decided to change the policy last year. “Instead of the haves and the have nots,” Dean of Student Affairs Tim Foster said, “it’ll be a unified tradition for every class. This way we can create a common introductory experience and tradition, and traditions bring people together, connect them to the place and to one another.”
The majority of first-years, about 370 or so, will go on one of the 41 trips offered by the Outing Club. And 26 students will stay on campus for the Bowdoin Science Experience.
The McKeen Center for the Common Good is offering 10 service trips, for 93 students. McKeen Fellow Erin St. Peter ’13 and Caitlin Callahan, Bowdoin’s assistant director for student community service, plan on traveling next week to Washington County to pin down final details at three new community service sites there.
Also, this summer, the two Cambodian students who will study at Bowdoin this academic year through the Harpswell Foundation will participate in one of the service trips in the midcoast.
All trip leaders — 23 McKeen leaders and more than 100 Outing Club leaders — will be on campus Aug. 17 for three days of training. Trips leave at first light the 22nd. “That’s game day,” says Becca Austin, the outing club’s assistant director.
In my day we didn’t need any of this kumbayah stuff to bond as freshmen.
When I first arrived on campus in the fall of 1964, between the signs and beanies we had to wear, and the Seniors haranguing us to do things like “find Lawrence Hall,” we bonded PDQ, let me tell ya.
The good old days.
I do not know who ” first years” are . I think they were called Freshman in my time. Could someone tell me why this was
changed? On balance it is kind of a funny term. When they go home on Thanksgiving to see all of their friends at the
football game and someone asks what year they are in and they say “I’m a first years I think they would get a funny
look.
I wonder if “first years” is a term designed to hide a student’s status. If my memory is correct, even during our freshman year academic classes we had some class members who were sophomores (which is harder to spell than “second years”)and actual classes studying actual subjects continued to have a mixture of first, second, third, fourth, and even fifth year students as we all worked to graduate.
Perhaps this is just the continuing desire of some folks to achieve some sort of passing “fame” by substituting one label for another…remember when a some names had to be “politically correct”? Am I the only one who has noticed that we no longer have actresses in our movies or plays? [In many places (most?) both men and women are called "actors".] OR, this may be reality following fiction (Have you read the Harry Potter series?).
I think “first year” is just a more gender-neutral term.