Frosh week has arrived, and we can hear it on every college campus at U of T. UC is shouting to Vic that “Vic’s second choice!” Vic is hollering to St. Mike’s “SMC, virgins cause they have to be!” St. Mike’s is screaming at Trin that “Your Mother F*ed the Dean.” Everyone is insulting the engineers.
Frosh leaders encourage the newcomers to repeat the same chants outside Convocation Hall on New Students’ day, at every campus pizza lunch, and even at the Sky Dome when rival colleges continue to hurl insults from opposite sides of the stadium. There must be a more interesting and welcoming way to initiate the frosh into their colleges than this monotonous barrage of insults.
The current frosh week initiation resembles opening day at a summer camp. Take away the swearing and the sexual innuendo and the frosh might just as well be eight years old again, shouting to opposing groups of campers, “there ain’t no flies on us.”
I’m sure there were some kids who enjoyed spending the day yelling at everyone in sight. The shy ones, however, silently mouthed the words, while the sensitive children were bewildered by the constant noise. The kids looking to talk to one of their fellow campers, let alone a familiar face in another group, found their words overpowered by the din.
Frosh week should not repeat the same mistakes many camps make on opening day. Students of all personalities and backgrounds should feel welcomed instead of intimidated when they arrive on campus. Furthermore, the desire for frosh committees to initiate newcomers and encourage them to identify with their home colleges should not supersede the other purposes of the week.
The activities between Labour Day and the start of classes give the first year students, especially commuters, the opportunity to connect with each other. When those same frosh see their new acquaintances in classes and around campus, the university will seem less large and impersonal. It is difficult to befriend anyone when you are yelling “suck my Vic” at anyone whose t-shirt differs from yours. What the frosh gain in college solidarity they lose in time spent bonding with other students.
Even as an initiation ritual, the hours of shouting abuses are not as memorable or as effective as the time the students in each college spend enjoying activities together and socializing as group. September in Toronto provides a multitude of opportunities for frosh to experience the city where they live for the next four years.
Many first-years are from other places and arrive eager to explore their new surroundings. Even commuters have the chance to visit unfamiliar areas of the city. Increasing the number of frosh trips to events and locations around Toronto would initiate the frosh through shared experiences and memories instead of insults hurled at other colleges.
My own frosh experience was substantially different from what the newcomers to U of T are immersed in this week. At the University of King’s College in Halifax, classes started the Wednesday after Labour Day. There was not a frosh week, only a frosh day too brief to be wasted hurling insults directed at the other Nova Scotia universities.
Instead, my fellow frosh and I boarded a bus for Crystal Cave Beach. We spent the day playing frisbee, eating burgers, and chatting by the ocean, returning to campus as a more cohesive group than when we had left. I will always remember my frosh day and the connection I have to the University where I spent my first year. I don’t think I’d be as nostalgic about hours spent in muddy fields, shouting that “I’d rather be an artsy than a f*ing engineer.”
