What happens during orientation is an inscrutable mystery to most parents. You made the long drive home and are beginning to enjoy being empty nesters but now are wondering what your kids are up to as they begin their new lives as college students. Are they getting up on time? Are they pigging out on junk food now that they are no longer getting home-cooked meals? Are they getting to their orientation sessions on time without you hounding them? In short, how are they surviving without you constantly pestering them as you did when they lived at home?
Parents really don’t know much about these things because they are usually barred from attending orientation, and there is nothing they can do about it. But I have been invited by Tufts University to attend the part of orientation you can’t. For the next couple days, I will serve as your guide as I sit in on most of the orientation sessions, talk to the professors and administrators in charge, and touch base with some of the first-year students themselves. Along the way I will share my own perspectives on orientation because, as a college president for twenty years, I have given the subject plenty of thought.
The purpose of the first day’s orientation session on the academic program is to give first-year students a sense of what courses are offered in each of the university’s four curricular divisions: the natural sciences, the social sciences, the humanities, and the arts. Students are expected to attend faculty panels representing the four divisions. There is also a session for first-year engineering students like Nathan. These panels are scheduled repeatedly throughout the day so that new students have additional opportunities to taste the endless variety of courses Tufts has to offer.
Like the student organizations hawking their wares across campus, the job of the faculty panel is to tell the first-year students in attendance why their departments are special and why, therefore, they should consider signing up at registration this coming Saturday for one of their courses. Tufts, like most liberal arts colleges, subscribes to a competitive free marketplace when it comes to choosing classes, but while some colleges allow preregistration over the Internet during the summer, almost all want first-year students to meet with their advisers before making a final selection. After registration, as in the case of Tufts (and per Marcus in the previous chapter), many colleges allow students to “shop around” during the first week of class and change a course if so desired.
Professor Anne Gardulski of the Geology Department, who is chairing the science panel, offers up some practical advice. She tells the sea of young faces before her that when they go to class they should sit in the front row so they can hear their professors and see what they are writing on the blackboard. Repeating President Bacow’s recent admonition at matriculation, she continues: “Take challenging courses, but don’t overreach yourself. You want to do well first year but not burn yourself out.” She also urges the students to not blow off introductory courses, especially in the natural sciences, simply because they bring with them advanced placement (AP) credits from high school.
At most colleges, high school AP courses with a score of four or five count as actual college credit, so that when students go to college they can take fewer courses, graduate earlier, and save money in the process. Indeed, with the goal of early graduation in mind, AP courses have proliferated, with 1.8 million high school students taking 3.2 million of them. This number represented 71 percent of all incoming first-year college students in 2011.1 Since almost all new students at selective colleges like Tufts graduated at the top of their high school class and therefore took loads of AP courses, the temptation is to prematurely blow off introductory courses. The problem is that many college professors question whether high school AP courses are truly the equivalent of a college course. And since there often is a progressive course sequence to the science majors they offer, they feel that skipping the introductory course by using an AP credit might put students at a serious disadvantage. Professor Gardulski is suggesting that, even if first-year students have science AP credits to burn, they might be better off taking an introductory science course designed for those who did plenty of high school science—even though the goal of graduating from college early might have to be sacrificed.
Professor Gardulski starts off the departmental reviews by saying a few words about geology, after which the other members of the panel representing biology, chemistry, physics, and premed give brief descriptions of the courses they are offering to first-year students. The meeting is then open for questions.
One student wants to know whether he must major in a science in order to go to medical school and is told by Carol Baffi-Dugan, program director for Health Professions Advising, that while a good grounding in science and math will be necessary she can just as easily major in a nonscience discipline such as history or English. Another student asks about undergraduate research opportunities, a hot activity at selective colleges, and is told that many Tufts science professors have students involved in their research but mostly during junior and senior year.
The new students are now told that later this afternoon they will join their faculty advisers at various venues around campus to discuss the registration process that will take place on Saturday. I will be joining Professor Gardulski’s group.
The next orientation session takes place up campus in Barnum Hall, named after P. T. Barnum, the circus impresario and Tufts benefactor. The presenters are Nicole Anderson, assistant director of the Career Center, who will talk about time management, the Achilles heel of many first-year students, and Julie Lampie, a nutrition expert with the Tufts food service, who will talk about the notorious freshman 15.
Nicole Anderson starts out by asking the assembled students to respond to her questions by putting their hands up. She asks how many of them did sports in high school. Almost everyone’s hands go up. How many did two sports? Still lots of hands. Three sports? Maybe a quarter of the students. Four sports? Just one or two. The questions continue with clubs as the focus. At “four clubs” half the students still have their hands raised!
“Now, what you are telling me,” Anderson says, as she surveys her hushed audience, “is that as high school students you were involved in everything. You probably thought this would help you get into a selective college. OK, so you made it! But college is really about depth, not just breadth. You are going to be encouraged to get involved, but you don’t have to be involved in a million different activities. It’s just not possible in this kind of demanding academic environment. So time management becomes really important.” The students are riveted.
Anderson continues by suggesting some helpful strategies:
• not to sacrifice sleep because if they fall asleep in class their professors won’t be happy;
• to know what their resources are, for example, how to use time features on their smartphone;
• to invest in a daily planner, electronic or paper;
• to be proactive and, for example, not wait until April of their sophomore year to start thinking about what they might choose for a major;
• to set smart, manageable goals for themselves and not think they have to do everything;
• to look into the future but begin with what they hope to achieve this semester;
• to set aside a time for reflection and relaxation.
“Remember, no one is perfect,” she concludes, “so forgive yourself when you screw up. Plus it’s OK to start over.” She ends by suggesting that the students ask staff for advice, noting that the Career Center employs time management consultants and career counselors like her.
Next up is Julie Lampie from the dining service. At Tufts, all new students are required to be on the premium meal plan, which means that they have unlimited access to all the dining halls, seven days per week between 7 A.M. and 9 P.M. In other words, they can eat all they want almost from morning ’til night! Lampie tells us that according to a recent survey 77 percent of Tufts students say they want to eat healthfully. “But guess what their top food choices actually are?” Hands go up. One student declares macaroni and cheese. Another, chicken nuggets. Several say “fried foods” in unison. “Correct. So where’s the idealism?” Lampie asks. She points out that the dining centers at Tufts serve all the foods just mentioned. But they also serve turkey in place of pork, egg whites in place of regular eggs, whole grain breads, yogurts, steamed vegetables, and plenty of fresh fruit. She mentions that the dining centers also have a vegetarian section and suggests that they don’t have to be among the 10 percent vegetarians and 1 percent vegans to enjoy these offerings.
Lampie now launches into one of my favorite subjects. “You know how in America, portions at restaurants are huge?” she says as she pulls two plates out of a brown paper bag she has placed on the podium. She holds both of them up for everyone to see. In her right hand is the standard plate restaurants used in 1957. It’s 10.5 inches in diameter. In her left hand is the plate most restaurants use today. It’s 12.5 inches. “No wonder we are an obese nation!” she remarks.
Next she pulls out of her bag two muffins and places them on the podium. The first is a huge muffin sold in any number of commercial coffee shops and the other is a smaller muffin available in the Tufts dining halls. As she holds up the larger muffin, she asks the students how many calories they think are in this typical retail six-ounce muffin. One young women shouts out “350 calories,” another “450 calories.” “Nope,” Lampie says. “The retail muffin has six hundred calories, 30 percent of the daily caloric requirement for the average woman!” She then holds up the smaller muffin. “This one contains only two hundred calories.”
Lampie tells the students that experiencing the so-called freshman 15 should not be the norm as some of them might think because research indicates that the average weight gain for first-year students is more like six pounds. So in order to prevent weight gain, she suggests that, instead of eating the large muffin or taking one of the larger plates and piling it up with food, they eat the smaller muffin and use the smaller plates that are also available in the dining hall. “If you are eating a fresh salad,” she quickly adds, “then absolutely use the larger plate!”
Lampie gives the students a helpful rule of thumb. She suggests that for each plate they carry through the serving line, fill half with fruit and vegetables, a quarter with whole grains, and a quarter with protein. “And reduce the amount of sodas and juice you drink.” She then asks the students how much sugar there is in each twelve-ounce can of Coke or Pepsi. The students don’t have a clue. “Well, it’s this much,” she announces as she pulls ten packets of sugar out of her magic brown bag. I hear gasps of disbelief.
On the way to the dining hall for lunch, I overhear some interesting cell phone conversations. “But mom, I saw you two days ago. [Pause] I miss you too, but I plan to come home for the weekend. Can’t it wait until then? [Pause] OK, OK. Let’s have lunch. I’ll meet you at the Campus Center in five minutes.” And there on the corner of Talbot Avenue and Latin Way, a first-year student embraces her parents as though they had not seen each other for ages.
Time for lunch. I load my plate with garbanzo beans, fresh organic carrots and celery, and plenty of lettuce (Julie Lampie has inspired me!), and I sit next to the only kid who is not with a group, hoping to strike up a conversation. After introducing myself I ask him where he comes from. He says New Hampshire. But before I can ask the next question, he tells me that he must leave immediately to—you guessed it—meet his mother in a few minutes! I thought the parents had gone home yesterday. Stupid me!
Outside the dining hall, a group of women are sitting on the patio wall in animated conversation, all of them puffing away on cigarettes. At their feet are a pile of cigarette butts from the hundreds of students who preceded them. I first started noticing this when I was a college president—the phenomenon of first-year women, in particular, smoking in groups and trying to look sophisticated and cool. A survivor of cancer myself, this has been hard for me to witness, and I’ve often been tempted to say something, but then chicken out at the last moment. Is it any of my business? Will they listen if I lecture them? But then I wonder whether our concern about dangerous drinking has obscured an equally dangerous teenage activity, namely, smoking? I wonder if we’ll hear any mention of smoking during orientation, but since it is legal, my guess is no.
In the late afternoon I join Professor Gardulski and her ten advisees arranged around a large seminar table. We are in the geology department where the room’s shelves are piled high with assorted rocks. Professor Gardulski opens the meeting by saying that it’s OK to call her Anne, but not to make the assumption that they can address all their professors this way. She then amplifies on the advice she gave at the natural science panel. “This is not high school,” she declares, “and the courses you will take here are very demanding. Examinations and papers won’t just be on the lectures you attend and the books you read. You will also be expected to apply what you have learned.” She then repeats what many others have been saying throughout this orientation: “Don’t get overwhelmed. You don’t need to be involved in eight or nine extracurricular activities as many of you were in high school. Focus on one or two things outside the classroom. Make sure these activities complement rather than detract from your academic program.”
Professor Gardulski next talks about registration. As she does this, a sign-up sheet is circulated allowing her advisees to choose a time when they will meet with her to review their proposed course of study for first semester. She encourages them to have backup courses in mind when they meet; because upper-class students have first choice, some courses might be oversubscribed.
Like most colleges, Tufts requires students to complete what are called foundation courses (sometimes known as general education courses) and distribution requirements, usually in their first and second years. At the School of Arts and Sciences, for example, foundation courses include college writing, foreign language and culture, and world civilizations. In addition students must take at least two classes in each of five academic areas, specifically, the humanities, the arts, the social sciences, the natural sciences, and the mathematical sciences.2 First-year students who have scores of 4 or 5 on high school AP courses can avoid some of these requirements, but as Professor Gardulski counseled at the presentations earlier today, using AP credits to avoid introductory courses in the sciences is generally discouraged. “Don’t worry if you don’t get every course you want,” she says. “When we meet we will go over your high school transcript and come up with some good courses that interest you. No course choice will be a bad one.”
Professor Gardulski next introduces her two upper-class assistants who have been quietly sitting with me in the back of the room. They will work on a more individual basis with her advisees, meeting with them in the computer lab on Saturday morning to help with the registration process. “It will take about a minute to do this,” one of them says.
Professor Gardulski winds up the meeting by suggesting that her advisees plan ahead but not to the point of planning all four years. The key is to keep their options open. As the meeting ends, a first-year advisee is just entering the classroom. Visibly embarrassed, he says by way of a lame excuse that he was on the phone with his mom and forgot what time it was. “That’s OK,” Professor Gardulski gently responds. “Since everyone has already signed up for their meeting with me you get the only open slot. See you tomorrow morning at eight.”
I take a break from orientation to talk with Laura Doane and Joe Golia, Tuft’s orientation directors, about the biggest challenges they face with first-year students. To me, Joe and Laura look like college students themselves!
“Most of the new students here at orientation were big shots in high school and sometimes feel they don’t need advice,” Joe says, “but believe me they really do. When they get overinvolved at Tufts, as many of them will, or lose their way, they need us to help them get back on track.”
And the parents: Laura gets more e-mails and phone calls about orientation from parents than she does from their children, with questions that can easily be found on Tufts’s website. Joe wants to gently tell these parents to let their student call if they have questions. Let them take responsibility for themselves. Let go. Laura agrees: “Well before they arrive at orientation and meet with their advisers, fully one-third of these new students have been told by their parents what courses they should take. This isn’t helpful either.”
Knowing that parents are often in the dark about what goes on at orientation, I ask Laura and Joe what they want these new parents to know. “That there is support here for their kids,” Laura quickly responds. “We don’t have all these eighteen-year-olds come to orientation and then abandon them.” Joe nods. “We understand that becoming a college student can be overwhelming. And that’s OK. Being overwhelmed is part of life. Financial issues, in particular, can be overwhelming. But there are people here who can help if their children just ask.” Laura adds that it’s natural for kids to make mistakes and that the college experience won’t be perfect. “Some kids will want to return home the first time things go wrong. Parents need to discourage this behavior.”
Because some kids think orientation is a waste of time, they blow it off and go drinking instead, which can get them into trouble—such as engaging in inappropriate sexual behavior—before the school year has even started. So Joe and Laura focus on training their orientation leaders around these issues by, for instance, requiring them to read the website “mystudentbody.com.” Laura also says that one of the things they do during orientation, besides helping first-year students make good choices, is to exhaust them. “As you can see, we run our programs all day long and well into the evening. There is little time for students to get into trouble.”
“And so far, knock on wood,” Joe declares, “there have been no major problems.”
Like many of the orientation sessions, this morning’s talk on academic integrity is student-run, this time by juniors and seniors who are Writing Fellows at Tufts. Writing Fellows are upper-class students, usually nominated by the faculty, who are available to help students improve their writing skills. Because academic integrity defines the academy, students are required to sign in for this session. Those who fail to show up will be required to attend a repeat session later in the week. The requirement is more than justified. According to a survey of fourteen thousand college undergraduates, 61 percent admitted cheating on assignments and exams, slightly more than the 59.4 percent of all high school students who admitted the same thing.3
Harold, a senior from New Orleans, tells the group that the session is not just about plagiarism but about maintaining the high ethical standards Tufts expects of its students. The students present are handed a booklet titled Academic Integrity, an exhaustive treatment of academic honesty as applied to papers, projects, and exams and of the consequences when students violate the rules. It gives examples of the use and misuse of sources such as word-for-word plagiarism, borrowed language, and paraphrasing.
The audience is cautioned against thinking that they can somehow game the system and are then given some examples of real Tufts first-year students who tried to do this. One first-year student got his roommate’s help and handed in a perfectly written paper but was then called into his professor’s office after taking the final exam in which his writing—his own without help—was deplorable. Another student received a bad grade on her midterm paper because of errors in punctuation but then altered the paper so that the punctuation was corrected. Thinking that he wouldn’t notice, she then confronted her professor claiming that he was in error, not she, and showed him the altered paper. What this student didn’t realize is that many professors photocopy corrected papers before they are returned to the student. Both of the students in these examples were suspended after adjudication by the Judicial Affairs Office.
The nuclear weapon in the faculty arsenal is Turnitin.com, a website to which many faculty require student papers be submitted. The search engine at Turnitin is linked to millions of sources, including published and unpublished papers together with books and manuscripts that will detect almost any attempt at plagiarism including paraphrased sentences and quotations. The papers come back to the professor either with a clean bill of health or with a notation that they contain plagiarized material. This service, used at many other colleges and universities, not only catches academic dishonesty but is a great deterrent to cheating. According to Turnitin, 1.6 million college teachers worldwide use its services.
The session ends with a panel member reading a letter from an alumna and parent whose first-year daughter got suspended for plagiarism. “‘My daughter was an A student in high school,’” Eliza reads from the letter. “‘She came to Tufts to study premed, but she overextended herself. Not only was she taking six very difficult courses but she was into a million different activities in addition to a robust social life. She simply didn’t have time to write two papers and study for four exams and so she completely plagiarized the papers. She was discovered and suspended, her plans for medical school ruined.’ JUST DON’T DO IT!”4
The economy is slowly recovering from a past recession, and college costs have skyrocketed over the years, so it shouldn’t be surprising that students are hanging from the rafters in Pearson Hall’s large first-floor amphitheater to hear about Work Study and jobs in general. This will be the first of two sessions on this topic, and maybe three hundred students are in attendance. Pat Reilly, director of financial aid, makes it clear that new students are not required to work, but if they qualify for the Federal Work Study program they can earn some extra money, which goes directly to them and not necessarily for their tuition. “So if you need some extra cash and you’re willing to work a few hours each week,” Reilly says, “I am interested in hearing from you.” I suspect, however, that since many families are stressed out financially, campus jobs aren’t just for extra pocket change! Indeed, according to a survey commissioned by Sallie Mae (largest issuer of federally insured student loans), as the economy was coming out of recession, 11 percent of all families in 2011 needed an average of $1,712 in Work Study money to help pay the tuition bill.5
Those considering jobs are advised to work between six and eight hours a week (twelve hours at the most) and to think about on-campus jobs rather than jobs in the community. Joanne Grande, manager of the Student Employment Office, tells the students that the advantage to working on campus is that university employers understand that first-year students might need flexible hours. This might not be the case if they work at Starbucks or Baskin Robbins in Davis Square. Consequently, first-year students are encouraged to check out Tufts’s job website, where work can be found in the dining halls, computer labs, and athletic offices. “You don’t have to make your minds up right away,” Pat Reilly suggests, “but don’t take too long to decide. Jobs fill up quickly.” Sensing how tight things are financially for many of these students, my bet is that the best jobs will be gone by tomorrow.
So far we have seen the faculty only in the context of the various divisional panels. This afternoon we have an opportunity to sample the teaching skills of some of Tufts’s best known professors in an orientation program called Faculty Forums. I choose to attend a lecture being given by Roger Tobin, professor of physics and chair of the department. Tobin is not only a world-renowned physicist but, more importantly, one of Tufts’s most engaging teachers as well. The title of his topic is catchy: “Sox and Drugs: Baseball, Steroids, and Physics.”
It is silent in the room as we wait for Professor Tobin. He enters, pulls a Boston Red Sox baseball jersey out of his dog-eared briefcase, and puts it on. Everyone laughs. He then introduces his presentation by saying that physicists are always involved in scientific investigation and that this morning he is going to do some sleuthing and try to answer an important question on the minds of many people, such as whether there is a relationship between steroids and all the home runs we were seeing from the likes of Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire.
After creating a line graph with “home runs” on the vertical axis and “years” on the horizontal, Professor Tobin labels a modest bump-up at the beginning of the line as “1927—Babe Ruth,” a second modest bump-up a quarter of the way along as “1961—Roger Maris,” and then the two huge bump-ups at the end as “1998—Mark McGwire” and “2001—Barry Bonds.” “So, is there a correlation between steroids and home runs?” he rhetorically asks the class, answering his own question by saying that he cannot say so definitively but that physics can suggest some answers.
Professor Tobin next presents a series of physics equations, graphs, and correlations involving gravity, air drag, lift, and spin that seem to be understood by most of the students in the audience, especially those among the ballplayers who recently took high school calculus and physics. Their eyes are riveted on the graph. Professor Tobin’s conclusion is that the effects of steroids could be large enough to account for McGwire’s and Bonds’s achievements and those of other elite athletes, but that average players will not get much of an advantage by using them. The session ends with an especially robust question-and-answer session.
What I like about this presentation is that it takes a difficult and sometimes arcane subject like physics and relates it to the world in which we live. Were I a first-year student who wasn’t necessarily going to major in physics but wanted to broaden my horizons, I would definitely take Professor Tobin’s course to fulfill one of my distribution requirements in science. What I also like is that the class is small. Too many first-year courses, especially at large universities, have as many as two hundred or more students packed into a large lecture hall. Even with teaching assistants meeting with students in smaller break-out groups for such classes, I’m not sure how much learning really takes place in a congested and impersonal environment. Moreover, being able to ask the professor a follow-up questions right after class can’t happen when lots of students are trying to get to the professor at the same time. Professor Tobin would agree that when in doubt it’s always important to talk to the professor and that sometimes these informal conversations after class are as important as the class itself.
On my way to lunch before the afternoon orientation programs begin, I overhear a noteworthy cell phone conversation between a first-year student and his father. “Dad, I just heard this awesome Faculty Forum lecture by Professor David Locke called New Technology for Old Music and want to take his course. [Long silence] I know you want me to take economics dad, but I really don’t want to go into the family business. I want to do something with music. I love music.”
Some parents can’t let go!
I am joined at lunch by Serena, an African American student I met at the Houston residence hall meeting the other day. She is the first member of her family to go to college, what we call a first gen. I ask Serena about her impressions of Tufts so far. She tells me that at first she thought she would be the only black student enrolled at the Tufts and wondered whether she would fit in. But then, at the orientation picnic the other night, she saw other students who look like her and felt a bit more comfortable. Serena’s roommate comes from Boston’s North End (“I guess she didn’t go too far away to college!”) and seems a bit eccentric, but so far they haven’t had any arguments. Serena thinks her roommate’s family is Italian American. “Her parents seemed really surprised when I met them yesterday,” Serena says. “I don’t think they thought that their daughter would be rooming with a black student.”
I ask Serena about the others students she’s met. She tells me that most of her classmates have parents who went to college, some to Tufts, so she feels a little out of place. At the same time, orientation has made her realize what a wonderful chance she has not only to get a great education but also to meet people who are different. She tells me that tonight she’s going to the Shabbat dinner at Hillel. “My father would probably be shocked because he’s a devout Baptist,” she says. “But what a great opportunity. Plus I love kosher food!”
“You seem to be happy you came here?”
“So far yes,” Serena responds. “The place is kind of overwhelming. At my high school the options were very limited. Here I have almost too many options. I really don’t know where to start. Kind of frightening. But it’s a good kind of frightening.”
Cohen Auditorium is packed for the last formal session of orientation. And with good reason. It’s about sex. And sex is the topic of conversation on college campuses across America just as it was when I started college. The only difference between now and then is that students today are much more open (and graphic) when they talk about this decidedly personal subject.
Tonight’s session, with the provocative title “In the Sack,” takes place in the context of theater. The upper-class students responsible for this part of the orientation program will role-play various sexual situations that they want the students in the audience to be aware of. To get our attention, they first give us some rather startling statistics:
On U.S. college campuses, thirty-five rapes are committed each year per thousand female students.
One out of six college women will experience rape or attempted rape.
The number of college men who rape is very small, but most have predatory histories and some average fourteen attempted rapes per year.
These men tend to be well liked and charming.
First-year women are the most vulnerable, and most rape attempts are made within the first six weeks of college.
Nine out of ten rapes are done by men their victims know.
Eighty-four percent of all rapes go unreported.
Seventy-five percent of male students and 55 percent of women involved in date rape were drinking.
As the audience absorbs this disturbing information, student actors begin to assemble on the stage. They will now narrate or enact scenarios developed from anonymous student testimonies.
“I was drinking all night,” one actor, a senior woman, reveals, using the very words of an anonymous classmate, “and this guy invites me back to his room. We start making out and it’s getting pretty hot and heavy. So he pulls out his dick and starts playing with it. ‘What are you doing?’ I ask. ‘Isn’t it obvious?’ he whispers. ‘I don’t want to do this,’ I say. ‘Put it away.’ He isn’t listening. While he pushes me down on the bed, he pulls his pants off, yanks my panties down and then starts thrusting. ‘I don’t want to do this,” I scream at him. ‘Oh come on, you know you want it.’ I finally push him off me but it’s too late. Later I realized that I’ve been raped. So when I run into him later in the week I confront him. ‘You raped me,’ I say. ‘I told you no but you did it anyway.’ ‘I didn’t rape you,’ he replies. ‘You were giving me mixed signals and besides, we were both drunk.’”
The action now shifts to a male actor standing on the opposite end of the stage. He provides an analysis of what just happened. “Is this rape?” he asks the assembly of new students. “It is because she said ‘No.’ And being under the influence is no defense in a court of law.” He then asks the women in the audience how many of them have ever been in a situation like this. An alarming number of hands go up. “OK guys, how many of you have seen one of your friends making the move on a drunken women at a party you were attending?” Again, lots of hands go up. “And how many of you intervened?” Just a couple hands this time. “We are a community at Tufts,” he yells out to the crowd as if he were leading a cheer at a Tufts football game, “and if we see something that is not right, we have a responsibility to intervene. DID YOU HEAR ME?” Subdued yeses are heard from the sober-faced crowd. “Be proactive,” he continues. “If you see a classmate who seems to be in trouble, ask her if she’s OK. If she indicates that she isn’t, then do something about it!”
Five different student actors now take over the stage. Three male actors stand on one side. They are seniors observing two other actors, a senior classmate and a first-year woman standing closely together. They all appear to be at a party. The woman is clearly drunk. As the classmate tries to kiss her, she staggers forward and almost falls down. It is obvious to the three senior men who are observing this situation that the first-year woman is not in control. And they know very well what their classmate has in mind. The three men decide they must take action. Two of them approach their classmate and convince him that what he is contemplating is wrong. As they do this, the other senior quickly removes the drunken woman from the party. The session ends with a review of what we have just observed: That consent cannot happen if you are drunk or on drugs. That sex can never be forced. That “no” means “no.” And that being a community means intervening when you see a classmate in trouble.
Tonight marks an end to orientation and a tradition that, in various forms, goes back to Tufts founding 157 years ago: the candle-lighting ceremony, an event that will be repeated four years from now when these students are seniors and about to graduate.
It’s 9 P.M., and I’m standing on the roof of the library, which is on the top of a steep hill. In the distance is a magnificent view of downtown Boston with its skyscrapers all lit up and glowing in the dark like the candles on a huge birthday cake. Below me 1,313 new students are assembling on the President’s Lawn, the same venue at which Wednesday’s community dinner had been held. As the new students arrive, they are handed candles.
I move off the library roof and slowly walk down to a hollow below to be nearer the students. I sit down at the base of a large oak, maybe twenty feet from the edge of the crowd. The cacophony of the human chatter reminds me of the katydids one hears on a warm summer evening. Phones occasionally sound with their various ringtones. This time the calls are not from parents but instead from newfound friends trying to locate each other so that they can enjoy this tradition together. As some new students approach the event from across the President’s Lawn, the sprinkling system suddenly comes alive. I’m sure President Bacow would frown to see this snafu in back of his house, but to these teenagers, getting soaked is just part of the fun. They howl with laughter as they skip and dance through the torrents.
Dean Reitman shares with the assembled students the traditions that make Tufts unique, the president of the Student Senate spins off several pithy pieces of advice, and two representatives of the alumni association, recent graduates themselves, take the mike. They talk about Tufts being one big family, then each lights a candle and, using their flames, light the candles of the students standing in front of them. Slowly the entire hill begins to glow, like the city in front of them, as 1,313 candles are lit. As the alma mater is being sung, I get up from my outpost under the oak tree, walk around the back of the crowd, and make my exit.
I spot both Nathan and Phoebe as I am leaving. They seem quite happy.