Debate and discussion surrounding Frosh Week conduct have made it necessary to re-examine the event’s core purpose: to welcome frosh to Queen’s and ease their transition to university.
In a recent editorial, Diatribe Editor in Chief Gareth Chantler attacked the way language is used during Orientation Week, criticizing the politically correct language frosh leaders are obliged to use.
It’s important to ensure debate on this issue is framed in the proper context. The activities and actions of Orientation Week should always harken back to its goals—ensuring students are properly introduced to and informed about Queen’s, Kingston and the student body.
Distilling Chantler’s argument further, we do need to be aware of what we are spending our time and energy on, in order to make sensitivity training and event planning effective. This year, for the first time, first-year engineering students were not taught the Engineering Hymn, a long-standing tradition at Canadian, American and British engineering schools. The Senate Orientation Activities Review Board (SOARB) minutes have not been updated yet, so the justification is still a subject of hearsay. Rumours suggest the line “… demolish 40 beers …” would be the most likely target for criticism from the istration. In tackling a seemingly harmless piece of tradition, SOARB and others involved have trivialized the effectiveness of their own hard work.
Now, I’m all for not involving alcohol in Frosh Week. Organized events can and should be, for the most part, dry—not out of rule, but because it doesn’t add to the event or advance the goals of Orientation Week.
However, pretending alcohol doesn’t exist and banning the mention of it outright neuters the training and inclusiveness movement by making more serious matters, such as the language that Chantler mentions seem unimportant.
It is important to test the maturity of the frosh; however, Chantler’s claim that language is that test is misguided.
The goals of Orientation Week, as stated on the AMS website, include making new students feel welcome and ensuring a smooth transition into university. Scrubbing clean events to the point of boredom accomplishes neither of these goals.
By removing mention of alcohol from Orientation Week, and denying that it’s a part of life at Queen’s, it enforces a negative taboo and increases the dangers in the way students consume it. By accepting alcohol as a public matter, understood and acknowledged, students can feel safe in consulting with their orientation leaders on how to, among other things, consume it appropriately.
Significant changes have been made to Orientation Week since 1999, when “untrained” orientation leaders and inappropriate signage put the University on the covers of national newspapers. Since then, SOARB has been on a mission to ensure the best interests of the University are looked after and the goals of Orientation Week are met. For the most part, SOARB has been able to accomplish this, helping to set the stage for effective leader training. However, SOARB needs to take a step back and make sure their campaign to sanitize Frosh Week isn’t carried to the extreme, where the training and events aren’t being harmed simply for the sake of changing things.
In the past few years, house parties have been eliminated from Frosh Week, removing the only event for the entire week in which young adults were allowed to consume alcohol, but were supervised and able to do so in a safe, responsible and monitored environment. This provided an excellent opportunity for students to interact in a common environment at Queen’s—one they might not have been accustomed to before.
We should make Frosh Week, and not the alcohol surrounding it, the focus, without worrying about framing some false reality for the event.
It is important to test the maturity of the frosh; however, Chantler’s claim that language is that test is misguided. Let their maturity shine by teaching them to be responsible for themselves and their actions, through the language they use, the behaviour they exhibit and the conduct they project.
Whether or not people want to it it, these frosh are adults, most of whom are away from home and on their own. Let’s stop treating them like children.
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Tom Woodhall co-chaired SOARB in 2004-05 and is a former Science Constable.
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