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BY MARY PRAGER

In print | Published September 4, 2008

First-year orientation is always a prime opportunity for student groups to reach out to potential new members of their communities. A change in the orientation schedule this year and a communication breakdown, however, spurred a controversy within the Intercultural Center and Black Cultural Center communities that resulted in an impromptu open house on the Saturday of orientation and a discussion on the role of the orientation as a time for student affinity groups to let first-years know of the diverse communities available to them on campus.

The primary relevant change in the orientation schedule involved cutting the individual group meetings that the Intercultural Center groups and the Black Cultural Center have traditionally held during orientation week. Assistant Coordinator of Student Activities Paury Flowers said the decision to do so was purely logistical, and not motivated by any desire to give preferential treatment to any particular group over the other. Rather, she hoped to level the playing field for all student organizations in their efforts to reach out to first-years. Also responsible for creating the orientation guide, she hoped that cutting down on events would produce a more streamlined and readable document.

“For individual student groups, the first time that I want them to have that connection is when it’s fair to everyone, and that’s at the activities [fair],” Flowers said. “Instead of giving specific individual groups a space in the schedule, we decided to support open houses with direct connections to the dean’s office folks.”

Without any kind of explanation as to why their groups did not have individual meetings during the orientation as they had in years past, several leaders of the student affinity groups responded with confusion and shock upon arriving at Swarthmore.

“Initially I was just really surprised and confused. Then shocked and angry,” Sable Mensah ’11 said. “I was unclear as to why they were cut and I was a little bit confused as to why I hadn’t heard about it,” Cecilia Marquez ’11 said. Mensah and Marquez areboth leaders in the IC/BCC community.
Some initially perceived the exclusion of the student affinity groups as a precursor of a gradual withdrawal of institutional support for diversity groups on campus. “What might have seemed like a small incident felt very large for those of us in the IC/BCC community,” Marquez said.

A particular point of contention was the inclusion of the Women’s Resource Center barbecue in the schedule. A student representative from the WRC sent a request by e-mail to Flowers on Aug. 11 to ensure that the group would have a barbecue during orientation. “I sent the e-mail to Paury Flowers because the WRC … is making a big effort this year to reach out to the Swarthmore community and we believed that a good way to do that was to host an event that would introduce the WRC to incoming freshmen who may be interested in getting involved,” Kristin Caspar ’09 said in an e-mail. “I request[ed] if the WRC could host an event for orientation and I was then directed to a member of the orientation board. From there it was very simple and we were put in the list of events,” she said in an e-mail.

Flowers did not receive similar written requests from leaders of other groups over the summer. Had they done that, Flowers said, she would have directed them either to the activities fair as the first point of contact or suggested they do some kind of open house – which is what they eventually did.
In a spontaneous move, leaders of several IC/BCC groups met in Sharples to discuss a course of action. They decided to e-mail Flowers stating their concerns and requesting institutional support for an impromptu open house, Marquez said. They also stated their intentions to inform first-years of the open house with flyers and an announcement at the end of the diversity workshops.

When leaders of the WRC found out that the IC/BCC groups wouldn’t be able to have their meetings, they considered canceling their event. “We were ready to cancel our meeting in solidarity with the IC/BCC community,” Dina Kopansky ’11, a member of the WRC board, said. Once the IC/BCC groups organized their open house, the WRC decided to keep the barbecue. WRC board members spoke with the Dean of the WRC, Karen Henry, and Flowers, both of whom were really responsive, Kopansky said. “The deans immediately saw that there was a big problem with what was going on,” she said.

Flowers responded by supporting the affinity group leaders’ plan to organize the open house. She sent an e-mail to the class of 2012 informing them of the upcoming event, and also sent an e-mail to several affinity group leaders explaining her motives for removing the individual meetings from the schedule. “What was missing from [the] equation was communication. I never minded that any group organized special meetings or events during the week. I just didn’t want to support some and not others,” she said in the e-mail. “Granted, with 20/20 hindsight having removed the meetings, I could have had a talk with Rafael about hosting an Open House but believe me and I’m sure he’ll attest in the few times we encountered each other there were many other things that needed to be discussed and the thought didn’t cross my mind,” she said in the e-mail. Planning for the first-year orientation begins an entire year in advance.

“The bottom line is your feelings were valid given that you had no information or communication from me or anyone else to go on,” she said in the e-mail.

Regardless of communication issues, Marquez and Mensah believe that the individual affinity group meetings are an essential component of the first-year orientation that should not have been cut from the schedule. “I think what we really did was say, this can’t be cut, we’re saying that this is just as important as listening to the dean of students speak. It’s important for students of color and queer students to know they have the community here,” Marquez said. “I think it’s especially important to do this during orientation, when they’re still finding themselves and their communities,” she said.

However, the first-year orientation is not necessarily the most crucial time for affinity groups to meet and bond with first-years, Assistant Dean and Director of the IC Rafael Zapata said. “I think the early meetings give people a sense of what’s available, but like in any relationship, the first impression needs to be augmented with what you do going forward,” he said. “The first meeting can give a good impression, but it’s not everything.”

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