First Year Program puts on the Freshmen 15

Sarah Goetz News Editor

As the Class of 2011 prepare for their sophomore year, 15 student performances will give the freshmen a final opportunity to reflect on their first year at Vassar. The Freshmen 15, sponsored by the Freshman Class Council and the Vassar First Year program, will take place at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, April 30 on the second floor of the Students’ Building.

The event will feature 15 three-minute reflections by members of the freshman class. The performances may take the form of songs, poetry readings, student-made videos or even comedy routines. Freshmen can draw on an achievement, a challenge or simply a shared experience from this past year.

“What is going to be unique and what I think is starting to surface is that we’ve all had very distinct experiences this year,” said Freshman Class President Joseph Martinez, who is organizing and hosting the event. “For some people, it has been incredibly important, and they have grown a lot. For other people, it’s been a very challenging year, a very difficult year,” he continued.

Nina Vyedin ’11 will perform an original song for the event. “The song started off as a verse in another song about going to the Poughkeepsie Galleria with my roommate and not being able to find a hat that I liked,” she said. “It evolved into something else, a reflection on my experience here, something I’m really excited about.”

Martinez hopes that his classmates will express diverse and distinct experiences. “I want it to be extremely open,” he said. Director of the First Year Program and Associate Dean of the College for Campus Life Edward Pittman ’82 added that “A lot of it’s funny, and a lot of it is reflective...so it’s very open to what the class wants to present. It’s really for students to talk about what they experienced in their first year.”

“I think the event will be really interesting, and I it’s exciting because it gives freshmen a voice,” said Vyedin. “I don’t think a lot of freshman get to be heard, so it’s nice that we get a chance to stand up and say, ‘Hey, this is what my experience has been.’”

The event is the final piece of the Vassar First Year, a series of events and discussions designed to introduce new students to Vassar and to expose them to some of the academic, cultural and social issues on campus. Pittman said that the program is “a way of providing some channels for first-year students to experience the academic and the campus community life from many perspectives.”

The First Year program, currently in its third year, begins with new student orientation and includes the William Starr lecture, among other events.

“It was something that I had always thought Vassar should have,” Pittman said. “We spend a lot of time during the first week talking about critical issues, and…First Year tends to build upon some of those discussions,” he noted. In addition to the Campus Life Office, the program coordinates with the Dean of Freshmen, the Dean of Students, the Office of Residential Life, the Library and the freshman writing seminar to incorporate a wide array of first-year experiences into the program.

The Freshmen 15 was established last year as a capstone to the Vassar First Year, and it proved to be one of the program’s more successful events. “Student-driven activities always generate a response,” Pittman noted, adding that “performance-based events that carry a message and engage the students” are typically the most effective.

While the Campus Life Office has given students autonomy to produce the program, Martinez suggested that it may still be difficult to pique student interest in the event. “It’s difficult because we didn’t come up with this event, it was just given to us,” he said. “This is a class tradition that was created by administrators,” he added.

However, Martinez was very positive about his goals and hopes for the upcoming event. “We definitely see a use for it,” he said. “It’ll be nice to see a lot of freshmen in one place again…and to hear 15 people reflect on some shared experience that we’ve now had,” he added. Martinez said that a number of freshmen have expressed interest in attending the event, and noted that “I think people are curious about other people’s experiences at Vassar.”