Senate has transferred the leadership of UFV’s dedicated New Student Orientation (NSO) day from the Student Union Society (SUS) to Student Life after concerns were expressed regarding the previous orientation programming run by the society.
SUS, the on-campus, student-run society, and Student Life, a UFV department focusing on student engagement, have agreed to work collaboratively on the day, combining activities they both had planned into one large event.
At the July 2019 meeting, Senate revoked SUS’s leadership over the dedicated orientation day originally granted to the society as a two-year trial in the fall of 2018. Previously, UFV did not have a dedicated orientation day as part of the academic calendar. Organizations within the university planned orientation events around class schedules or before the start of classes over the Labour Day long weekend.
When SUS had presented to Senate this February on the success of the first year of orientation days, it was mentioned that they had chosen not to use the orientation day in the Winter 2019 semester. Gurvir (G) Gill, SUS president at the time, said they were concerned over attendance rates as orientation was scheduled for the Friday before the start of classes. SUS had not collected data on attendance during the winter orientation but reported between 400 and 500 students at the fall orientation event.
Members of Senate had also expressed concern after the presentation over a workshop choice during the fall orientation, where males took a healthier masculinity workshop while females took a consent workshop.
At the following Senate meeting, SUS and Student Life were invited to Senate to discuss the future of the orientation day, and it was decided that a collaborative approach would be taken with Student Life taking a leadership role over the day.
“I think both groups were passionate about the day … and Senate had agreed it should be a collaborative approach, but one of the senators brought up that someone needs to be responsible,” Greg Mather, manager of Student Wellness and Development at Student Life, said. “It’s more of a logistics things, organizing the volunteers and getting some of the bigger things. It just kind of made sense where we’re positioned within the university.”
Tripat Sandhu, SUS president, had run for election this winter on a platform of increasing collaboration between SUS and other organizations within the university. She said that the collaborative efforts were in line with her vision of the way SUS can work with UFV.
“There are so many different skills and assets that both UFV Student Life and SUS bring, and combining them together can bring a great student orientation that is super engaging for the new students and something they can always remember as first-years,” Sandhu said.
Unlike in previous years, where Student Life and SUS had two separate orientation programs, the coordinated effort allowed for a single NSO schedule. The day started off with a breakfast handed out by the women’s volleyball team, followed by an introduction ceremony that included speeches from Sandhu, UFV president Joanne Maclean, and Chantelle Trainor-Matties, the Indigenous artist and UFV student who designed the NSO T-shirts.
UFV received a Halq’eméylem word for the event: Tl’etl’axel, which refers to the first runner who would invite people to Sto:lo community events, opening the doors for them to get involved in the community.
“We’ve welcomed and opened our arms and invited students, new people, to be part of our community. They have an opportunity to see all the different parts of our community and see where they fit in,” Mather said.
The word is featured on the NSO T-shirts along with an Oregon spotted frog, an endangered local frog whose recovery strategy has been taken on by many UFV alumni and community members.
After the invocation ceremony, students divided into groups that cycled through three stations. One was a faculty welcome session where every faculty at UFV, excluding the Faculty of Applied and Technical Studies which were already in session, organized a personalized welcome event for their students. Another was an interactive introduction to UFV’s “wellness wheel.” The last was a “How to University” panel hosted by representatives from both SUS and Student Life where students could ask questions on university life or have the panel discuss pre-written, frequently asked questions.
The day finished with a midway hosted on the Green featuring interactive midway fair games. Clubs and Associations, community members, and university departments hosted a variety of games including a dunk tank, rock climbing wall, and fishing.
Over 1,300 students signed up in advance for this year’s NSO, which Mather said was certainly more students than for previous orientations that took place on or before Labour Day.
Image: Jessica Barclay/The Cascade
