Convocation Connotes New Beginning

After meeting their POP groups outside the dorms, the students streamed across 13th Street into Shirk Stadium, where they congregated before filing into Bollman Gym for the mid-afternoon Opening Convocation.

The program featured an address by Interim President David Stinebeck and presentations by summer students. For many freshmen, the highlight of the convocation was the pinning ceremony, when they received their class pins from the Albright faculty waiting to welcome them at the front of the gym.

“I thought the pinning was a great gesture,” Landis said.

“Graduating from high school was like an ending, and the pinning made it feel like this was a beginning. It really set up the start of the whole college experience.”

From that point on, orientation was a steady stream of meetings, icebreakers, tours and educational programs designed to help the students understand and deal with some of the highs and lows, the challenges and opportunities, the successes and failures that college can bring.

Some subjects were practical, some cautionary, some just plain fun. “The programming addresses issues they’ll need in college adjustment, such as diversity, alcohol and drug abuse, personal relationships, leadership and academics,” Stetler said.

“Our ultimate goal is to bring them in and make them feel part of the Albright community early on.”

Particularly practical was an early session on financial aid. “This year it was geared toward warning the students about some of the problems they could run into with credit cards and other things that our financial aid office has seen as problems,” Stetler said.

Sending & Receiving Signals

Other programs addressed the realities of college life to help students deal with some of the pressures they’ll feel.

During the program “Sex Signals,” actors Ben and Kelly, portraying two college students, acted out a variety of scenes to illustrate social situations that college men and women could easily find themselves in, and explored some of the differences between how men and women interpret sexual situations and respond to sexual overtures.

In one scene the actor had been accused of sexually assaulting a woman he had known for a few weeks. He admitted to having sex with her, but didn’t believe it was rape. Upon further reflection he realized that she may have tried to give him signals to stop, but the message didn’t register at the time. Responding to clues from the audience, he soon came to understand that the two had failed to communicate their intentions, and now had to deal with the results.

“Through TV and films we’re constantly hammered with different ideas of what romance and sex are supposed to be like,” Kelly said. “The way these mating games are played there’s no way one guy can know all the rules. But it’s clear that if she’s set boundaries or changed her mind then she has to communicate it and he has to respect it.”

However, she said, “There’s a difference between rape and regretted sex. Rape is when you protest during the act and he doesn’t stop. That’s not the same as waking up the next morning regretting doing something you wanted to do at the time.” The best way for college students to avoid such problems, the actors advised, is to “listen to each other and communicate your intentions.”

The message seemed to get through. “It was an ‘in-your-face’ type of program,” Brooks said, “and they didn’t side with one gender. They made us realize that women shouldn’t have to put up with that kind of behavior. On the other hand, the man shouldn’t be accused of doing something wrong just because the woman regrets something she did.”

“I thought the approach was enlightening,” said Adam Daney, a freshman from Newtown, Pa. “It taught us to be careful about how we present ourselves and the situations we find ourselves in. Communications should be a lot better between people, and it gave us the right tools to communicate.”

“The point I came away with was that there are many ways that things can be misinterpreted, and there are differences in the way men and women are viewed, especially in certain situations,” Landis said. “So you have to be intelligent about the decisions you make, the people you hang out with and the friends you choose.”