Freshman year can be a very difficult time. Your neck could be injured from carrying a heavy lanyard or you could get some sort of rash from not washing your Bama Bound shirt often enough. These are serious issues facing the freshman community that should be taken seriously. Then there are the challenges of being away from home for the first time, which, combined with newfound personal and academic responsibilities, make it hard to be a freshman. The University itself probably can’t do anything about lanyard injuries (though maybe the Health Hut could make some fliers?), but they can work to make sure more opportunities are available to combat the social challenges of starting college.

Meeting these challenges can help the University in its long-term goals. Higher four-year graduation rates will raise the University in rankings as well as in the view of prospective students, and making students feel like they belong keeps people from dropping out. List after list indicates that feeling like just a number can drive students to drop out of college. As the University has larger freshman classes every year, we need to be especially conscious of creating small communities where new students can feel like they belong.

This can be done by engaging students in small programs prior to the start of class. Luckily, there is a model for this right here at the University. The Honors College brings 150 students to campus a week early for their annual Honors Action Programs. These programs, which are already small, group students into project groups. This gives them a common goal as well as a week to spend working and getting to know Tuscaloosa together. As an added bonus, many of the participating students live in the Ridgecrest dorms and can continue conversations from the program into their social life outside it. These programs do have one significant flaw; they only serve a very limited portion of Honors College students and an even smaller portion of the university as a whole.

Again, we’re in luck on this point. We do not need to find service projects from every incoming freshman. By virtue of scheduling alone, women participating in sorority recruitment would not be able to participate in an Honors Action or similar program. They also don’t need one in the same way, because in their first week on campus they are welcomed into a group on campus where they can feel they belong. A smaller group of students who already have a way to participate before classes start, but one close to my own heart, is the Million Dollar Band. Marching band creates a feeling of belonging within the larger university, as well as within smaller section groups. Throw in the common goal of preparing a show, and it’s a perfect storm. There is also the Camp 1831 program, though it lacks the element of a common goal and is often advertised in such a way that it might not appeal to in-state students.

So perhaps after these programs are counted out, more than two thirds of incoming students don’t have an opportunity to participate in a small group activity before classes start. We still don’t need to find things for all those freshman to paint. While the Action programs are a good model, these programs don’t necessarily need to be service oriented. They could just as easily be focused around fine arts (like the MDB) or around another interest. Perhaps freshman interested in the SGA could spend a week learning to prepare legislation for the upcoming year, or students who aren’t yet sure of their interests could interview upperclassmen about different majors and extra-curricular activities to then prepare a magazine of some sort for their peers.

These programs would be worth their cost to the University by virtue of keeping more students in class because they feel like they have a home here in Alabama. We probably shouldn’t discount the idea of having fliers about the lanyards, though. That would probably help too.

Allie Mollenkamp is a junior majoring in English and theatre. Her column runs biweekly.