Megan Trotter | News Editor
For many students the first week of college means adjusting to a home away from home, but for commuters it means cramming their things into a backpack and traveling to a new campus.
To accommodate the newcomers who don’t live in the dorms, welcome week has taken a new form.
This year, the Duquesne orientation team spearheaded a new program specific to acclimating incoming undergraduate commuter students.
Jet Jacobsen, Duquesne’s first official Commuter Chair for Orientation, said the new program is centered around the idea of creating an orientation plan that is inclusive for all students just starting their time on The Bluff.
“I think the key to orientation is really in the first couple days, whether you’re going to get students to latch on to an idea of what orientation is, or whether they’re just going to kind of let it float by,” Jacobsen said. “If they don’t latch on to it [orientation week], they just don’t have to be on campus anymore, and they will head home.”
Traditional orientation programming includes a week-long schedule of activities and events designed to help new students familiarize themselves with the campus and create connections with their peers.
However, due to the early morning and late night hours of past years’ events, many commuter students were unable to take part in a variety of the intended activities. Move-In Day, which commuter students do not participate in, has also been a big part of orientation in previous years.
“I think it was a big issue because commuter students weren’t really invited to orientation in a traditional way,” Jacobsen said.
Since commuting students do not live on campus, they miss a major part of the orientation process where they receive t-shirts, lanyards and information about where they should be going throughout the week.
New commuter and political science student Evelyn Sorg will be walking to campus during her freshman year.
Sorg’s mother is an alumna of Duquesne which meant that she never received a formal tour because her family was already somewhat acquainted with the campus.
“I’ve never even been on the full campus,” she said to one of the orientation leaders during a commuter orientation event. He offered to help show her around. Sorg said she appreciated that the leader was concerned with making sure she was comfortable for her first day of classes.
“He was more focused on making sure I knew my way around, than the scavenger hunt. We would occasionally come across clues, and he’d be like, ‘Oh, there it is,’” Sorg said.
While there were a few mandatory commuter orientation events, new commuting students were still encouraged to go to the traditional activities .
Jaidon Mears, a commuting cybersecurity student, attended a mix of both orientation programs.
“They did the speed-friending thing, where they have rows of chairs and sat us close to each other, and we have 45 seconds to talk to the person in front of us. I feel like that was pretty cool,” Mears said.
However, first year-student Alyssa Hempfield-Best enjoyed the opportunity to meet other commuter students but said the schedule was confusing. She was unsure what events were mandatory and whether or not she was invited to attend traditional orientation in addition to the commuter programming.
While organizing the new program, Jacobsen said he worked with the Director of Commuter Affairs, Tim Lewis, to create a schedule that was conducive to as many commuter students attending as possible.
“Most commuters do have jobs. They do work throughout the summer and throughout the school year,” Jacobsen said. “To see if they can get the time off of work to come for these events is really, really important.”
Jacobsen, who is originally from Seattle, Washington, said that commuter orientation was the last chair position he wanted when he applied.
“Being a non commuter student who was trying to bring orientation to these new commuters, I thought, ‘Well, what do I know best? I know orientation.’ And so my main goal was to really bring the orientation feeling, the orientation energy, to the program, even though it was going to be for commuter students.”
It worked for Sorg.
“I got to meet so many different people that literally, today I would pass them and be like, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s you,’” she said. “I liked that I was able to just have a few faces in my pocket.”