Most students arriving at an elite Ivy League institution for the first day of college expect to be greeted by advisers with books, maps and maybe a beer - not Tweedledee, Mickey Mouse and a cow.
"It's not what I expected," Scott Rankin '98 said from his dorm room in the Fayerweather farm. But "it is a way to liven everything up."
For the third year in a row, the undergraduate advisors and area coordinators have donned creative costumes and decorated the dorms as everything from Alice's Wonderland to Old MacDonald's Farm in an effort to make incoming students feel more welcome and relaxed.
"The idea is to give a warm welcome to students and their families as they arrive and unpack," Dean of Residential Life Mary Turco said.
Thursday's campus-wide conversion included the River Cluster as Candyland, where first-year students feasted on lollipops and gumdrops, and East Wheelock Cluster as Camelot, where students were knighted before receiving their keys.
A helping hand
But opening day was filled with more than fun and games. From 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday, the upperclass creatures helped their new dorm-mates carry boxes to their rooms, handed out room keys and informative material and arranged for more serious meetings to take place among UGA groups later that evening.
"We're ranch hands - it only makes sense that we give them a hand or two," Kelly Bryson '95, a UGA on the Fayerweather farm said Thursday. Students used to picked up their keys at the Key Counter in the basement of Parkhurst Administration Building and did not necessarily meet their UGAs as soon as they arrived on campus.
At each dorm, students were loaded with treats - including a chest of chocolate coins at the Gold Coast pirate ship, Wild Thing key chains at Massachusetts Row and a barbecue at the Fayerweather farm.
Creating a new campus
The UGAs and ACs spent all day Wednesday making supply runs to K-Mart in West Lebanon and furnishing the dorms - both inside and out - with balloon bulls (Fayerweather farm), signs to Gum Drop Gorge and Rock Candy Route (River Candyland) and an indoor putting range (Four Seasons Hotel at Hitchcock).
Jake O'Shea '97, a tour guide at Ripley/Woodward/Smith's small world, said his dorm's UGAs and ACs worked from 8 a.m. to midnight Wednesday transforming each floor into a different continent and marking every door with glacier and globe name tags.
A personal touch
Along with their different themes, each dorm had a unique greeting method, but all included the basic elements of signing in, checking IDs, distributing keys and acquainting freshmen with their UGAs.
For instance, students living in East Wheelock's Camelot had to "show reverence to the king" before receiving their room keys, according to a sign pinned at the foot of a make-shift throne on the patio area. Those in Rip/Wood/Smith were given their keys in passport folders to the tune of "It's a Small World" and asked to mark their home towns on a world map in the lounge.
A creative culmination
Part of the motivation behind this type of greeting system was also to provide a much-needed (and creative) outlet for the UGAs and ACs after a grueling 10-day period of intense training.
"They've worked really hard," said Area Director Scott Brown, who led the training period along with Area Director Sharon La Voy. "Every office was trying to vie for 10 minutes of time with them -- they have such a connection with the students that isn't manufactured anywhere else on campus."
