Academic affairs officials implemented group activities into a new tradition-oriented rally for this year’s Stars Week.
Stars Week is the weeklong schedule of orientation activities meant to help freshmen acclimate to the campus community before classes start. It was Aug. 13-19. Students participated in traditional activities like Matriculation Convocation and First-Year Follies, as well as new events like the Traditions Rally.
Freshmen of the class of 2022 were put into small groups called “Stars Groups,” each of which put together a five-minute presentation or skit focused around an assigned OCU tradition. The top six Stars Groups presented these performances at the Traditions Rally on Thursday in Petree Recital Hall in Kirkpatrick Fine Arts Center.
Colbi Beam, senior coordinator of first-year experience, said the Stars Groups and Traditions Rally are helpful because they indicate more clearly who the university should try harder to connect with.
“We’ve never taken real attendance in any meaningful ways,” Beam said. “We might know about how many people are there, but this allows us to see who is engaging with our programs and who isn’t and try to capture those who we missed in the past. The beauty of having these small groups is that we actually know who’s coming and who’s also having a really hard time so we can reach out to them.”
The Stars Groups were assembled randomly and independent of major. Beam said this was to ensure students are acquainted with others outside of their classes or interests.
“The whole point is that they get to know people who are different than them, that aren’t living on their hall, that they’re not going to share classes with all the time,” she said. “The New Student Orientation Leaders are the same way. They all have two or three orientation leaders to each group, and we try to really diversify those so that there’s not the same major and there’s not a lot of redundancy.”
Blue Out Blow Out and Stars on Bricktown, former Stars Week events, were cut from this year’s activities. Beam said Blue Out Blow Out, a spirit rally in Abe Lemons Arena, was fun but didn’t have enough of a learning outcome or create real connections between students. She also said Stars on Bricktown, an opportunity to visit Oklahoma City’s downtown entertainment district, was cut because it conflicted with Greek recruitment and was too expensive for a low level of engagement.
“They outlived their legacy a little bit,” she said. “When I look at our programs and how we fund things, I need to make sure that the things we’re introducing have some real teeth, and we’re making sure that it benefits them and we’re not wasting their time or wasting our money on it.”
Stars Week is planned by Beam and the New Student Orientation Leaders, a group of more than 50 upperclassmen who plan and prepare Stars Week starting in October of the previous year. Beam said this year the staff tried to orient events and attractions toward students who are less likely to feel comfortable at OCU in their first week.
“We know the students who are going to be really successful and that Stars Week is going to appeal to. We know that our music theater students and our dance students are going to eat it up. We could literally just put them in a room and most of our students could find a way to have a good time and fall in love with OCU,” she said. “But there are other students that we’ve always catered our programs to, that get lost in the shuffle. So we’ve talked about, with every program we do, ‘let’s talk about the student who’s not the performer, or the student who isn’t going to walk in and have 10 friends already that they met at camps here.’”
Tiera Matthews, acting freshman, said she enjoyed being so active during Stars Week because it showed her that officials genuinely want her as a student.
“Always having somewhere to be, and just feeling super welcome, and knowing that you won’t be idle is comforting,” Matthews said. “In a college experience, I look for a community that wants me and that has a place for me, versus a super big school that’ll just place me somewhere.”
Landon Honolka, music performance freshman, said he came to OCU because officials seemed to care about him more, based on scholarships and his impression of the campus.
“I chose to go to OCU because I was offered a lot more than any other school, which means they probably care a little bit more about me here than other schools,” Honolka said. “They seem like they really care about what they’re doing here.”
Beam said the class of 2022 is her favorite and the largest freshman class she’s ever seen at OCU since joining the faculty in 2011. The class is about 375 students.
“I adore them,” she said. “They are so much fun. I have great faith in the class of 2022 in doing great things for Oklahoma City University because they are so excited to be here. I can feel it at all of our events.”
Beam said, more than anything, she wants the class of 2022 to learn from OCU how to be adaptable.
“I would be misguided in saying that I don’t think they’re going to have hardships, I don’t think they’re going to question their decision to be at OCU at some point or I don’t think that they’re going to have some struggles while they’re here,” she said. “But I hope that we give them the tools to make them adaptable to those situations and to learn to overcome them. My goal always is for them to find community here.”
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