Almost 3,000 freshmen and transfer students joined the Syracuse University community last week, starting the year off with a flurry of programming and activities designed to prepare them socially and academically for the upcoming year.

‘What I think was really exciting was just walking around on campus the last four days and hearing people’s observations,’ said Mariana Lebron, director of orientation and transition services. ‘The new students on our campus are amazing. This is a great, talented incoming class that I think is going to impact our campus very positively.’

Chancellor Nancy Cantor delivered her first formal address to the class of 2008, welcoming them with hopes that they will try to see things from fresh and diverse perspectives and take risks throughout college – ‘but not too many.’

‘You really are my first class at SU,’ Cantor said. ‘I’ll be watching you and with you, and you watch me. And we’ll get it right together.’

Move-in and other orientation events were facilitated by student leaders and Goon Squad upperclassmen who shepherded new students and lent help to families arriving with U-Hauls, trailers and cars packed to capacity.

‘My parents are a little upset because I’m the first one going to a university,’ said Amanda Elliott, a freshman architecture major from Canada. ‘I’m just really excited to see the room.’

Once the parents left, hundreds of volunteers and student leaders helped freshmen navigate their first few days on campus, from events such as a seminar on sex in college titled ‘Orange You Glad We’re Talking?’ with speaker Don McPhearson to the freshman convocation.

‘The programs are designed to help students become acquainted with all our campus has to offer, not only in terms of people, but the potential to intellectually look at things,’ Lebron said. ‘So far it seems people are enjoying their experience here, and we’re very pleased with how things are going.’

This is the second year new-student orientation was offered at SU, and organizers said everything has gone smoothly.

‘I think opening week should really be a celebration of our students, so it’s exciting to see students happy about this,’ Lebron said. ‘There are well over a few thousand people working to make this effort something to be proud of.’

Susan Donovan, the dean of admissions, said the class’s diversity of experience and heritage – 81 students are international and 19 percent of the class is black, Asian-American, Latino or Hispanic – would enhance their time at college.

‘They represent a wide range of academic interests and bring to us very different backgrounds and experiences. The classroom discussions will be enhanced by enrolling students who have such a variety of perspectives,’ Donovan said. ‘We continue to attract a very accomplished group of students to the university.’

The class is also accomplished academically, with a mean GPA of 3.6 and an average SAT scores ranging from 1140 to 1310.

‘We have already begun recruiting for the fall of 2005,’ Donovan said. ‘I’m sure that our current students and their experiences at SU will be the best testimonials when these families visit our campus this fall.’

Published on August 29, 2004 at 12:00 pm