It has been a month since the Keenan Hall Class of 2019 arrived at Our Lady’s University and was welcomed by Keenan’s ambassadors, emblazoned with our pink shirts as we brought suitcases, televisions, and boxes of granola into the freshman dorm rooms.  This was my second time working as part of a welcoming committee, having worked on First Year Orientation—affectionately known as “Frosh-O”—during my sophomore year.  It is unfortunate, however, that now I must refer to Frosh-O in the past tense.  The demise of Frosh-O and the rise of Welcome Weekend has altered a great Keenan and Notre Dame tradition and made harmful changes to the Notre Dame experience.

I realize that Frosh-O may not have been the best experience for everyone, a weekend where outgoing students thrive on meeting new people, tradition, and song and dance.  I loved every minute of my Frosh-O, and I give credit for that to the Keenan hall staff and commissioners.  The serenades, endless stream of activities, and Keenan rituals focused my attention on my new home, not the familiarity I had left behind, or that excruciating moment after Mass when my parents bid me farewell.  I felt welcomed to Notre Dame, and that feeling lasted throughout the first few weeks.

I wanted to give that feeling to future Keenan Knights, so I served on the Frosh-O staff my sophomore year, which was another tremendous experience despite new restrictions from the Student Activities Office.  That being said, our Frosh-O staff had 20 hours of hall programming with Keenan traditions, new events, and time for small-group conversations between the staff and first-years.  I returned for my victory lap this year, curious to see how Welcome Weekend would differ from Frosh-O, and I was disappointed by a few major changes that affected the quality of the opening weekend on campus.

The first and most egregious alteration was the amount of time allotted for hall programming.  In contrast to my freshman and sophomore years, when Keenan was approved for 20 or more hours of activities, this year the time was cut to 14 hours.  Six hours might not seem like a drastic difference, but that is too much precious time to be cut from an integral part of the former Frosh-O experience.

The differences in the Sunday schedule were crucial.  Previously, Keenan had 10 and a half hours of programming.  This year, it was cut to a mere four and a half hours.  Parents leave campus on Sunday and first-years are confronted with perhaps their first long stretch of time away from their families.  It was incredibly valuable to me to have programming with my dorm on Sunday afternoon, as I was able to put off my worries and focus on my brothers around me.

That was not the case this year.  Instead, first-year students were offered optional events, like the farmers’ market, a Shakespeare performance, and the women’s soccer game.  These activities, as opposed to a structured format with the residence hall, do not serve the purpose of Welcome Weekend.  If the suggested campus events were so important, it would have been far more constructive to have dorms attend them together.

Leveling the playing field between dorms with historically bad or good Frosh-O programming doesn’t improve the experience.  I would have appreciated it if the Orientation Steering Committee (OSC) had set the more energetic dorms as the standard and worked with other dorms to bring them up to par.  What good does it do for a first-class dorm like Keenan or Lewis to lose their programming time?  It can be necessary to censor some dorm events, but removing valuable time from the uniquely wonderful residence hall community misrepresents the spirit of Notre Dame.

Another big change was the fact that most of the Welcome Weekend activities were optional; as staff members, we were encouraged to tell students that programming was always voluntary.  On the official Welcome Weekend schedule, a Notre Dame logo signified events that required attendance.  Out of all hall programming, only one event—the welcome address with rectors and hall staff—was deemed mandatory by the OSC.

In years past, this voluntary attitude was not present.  While no student was ever forced to go to an event, every single one of us marched through programming anyway.  We were encouraged to give our all and match the energy of the staff.  We did, and it is something that my friends and I from Keenan have remembered to this day.  An optional Welcome Weekend sends the wrong message to impressionable first-year students.

Optionality is not how college works.  One’s freshman-year roommate is not optional, as mine never failed to remind me.  Deciding that a class or professor is “optional” will most likely lead to a failing grade.  Students should be encouraged to do everything at Notre Dame wholeheartedly.  I like to think of Notre Dame as a place that is full of traditions, unapologetic for our zealous commitment to whatever we do: academics, faith, football, extracurriculars, etc.  Why, then, lose sight of that passion and energy in the very first weekend?

If we are welcoming first-year students to the university, they should understand that they will be outside of their comfort zone.  This is college.  Babying them is just delaying the harsh reality that when all of the tapestries of Welcome Weekend and free picnics on the quad have disappeared, many first-years will be left without a familiar face.

In Keenan Hall we are Fratres in Christo.  Frosh-O allowed me to strengthen those bonds of friendship with my fratres, with Keenan traditions and time to appreciate the wonder of Notre Dame.  When that valuable time is taken way, it becomes difficult to cement those eternal bonds of friendship and truly welcome my Fratres and Sororum to Our Lady’s University.

 
Seamus Ronan is a senior at Notre Dame.  Contact him at sronan@nd.edu.