When I started college in 1986, there was no freshman orientation to speak of. We arrived a week before classes, unpacked our stuff, bought our books, and spent the rest of the week hanging out with the people on our floor. During the day, we explored the campus and the city of Berkeley. At night, we ordered pizza and stayed up till all hours telling stories. We had an R.A., an unwashed unshaven upperclassman named Sean. Sean was a managerial minimalist. His disciplinary style consisted of reminding us that we were grown-ups and that he was not our parents, that what we did behind closed doors was our business but that if we were dumb enough to break laws in front of him he would have to bust us. Sean's method of generating that all-important dormitory phenomenon, "floor unity," was similarly economical. Every night at 5 Sean would round up all the people on the floor and lead the way to the dining commons, where we would eat together and then play a version of quarters with a dish of the grossest-looking dessert available on that day (at our less-than stellar cafeteria, there were always plenty of gelid, slippery unidentifiables to choose from). We liked being treated like adults, and we liked spending time with one another. That was all the orientation we needed.

Today freshman orientation (or, as it is now called on many correct campuses, new student orientation) is big business and a big deal. Orientations frequently last several days; many last up to a week or more. Amherst's First-Year Orientation is a veritable marathon--at nine full days, with an additional six days of follow-up programming, it is not for the free spirit or the faint of heart. The rationale behind such orientations is simple enough: they are for easing students into college. Designed to help new students make the transition to college life, orientation helps them make social contacts, makes sure they become familiar with the campus and its resources, and guides them through basic back-to-school chores such as registration, book-buying, and setting up email accounts. There is always a convocation of some kind at orientation, and there is usually some advising--at some schools, students are personally guided through course selection and registration. There are placement exams for math and writing. There are scavenger hunts and ice cream socials and movies and mixers. There are walking tours and floor meetings and sessions on safety, diversity, alcohol awareness, safe sex, and sexual assault. There are free bagels, free condoms, and, when parents and administrators aren't looking, free beer.

On the surface, it all sounds warm and inviting. It makes the school look caring and concerned, sending the message to parents that their children are in capable, responsible hands and sending the message to students that the school understands their concerns and will go to great length to meet their needs. Orientation is the university in loco parentis at its finest--and at its most problematic.

Ironically, what's problematic about so many college orientations is precisely their extensive, extended nature. Anxious not to seem to be neglecting new students, many of whom may be living on their own for the first time, many colleges and universities err the other way, establishing orientation schedules so regimented (often from breakfast to bedtime), so remedial (nothing is left to chance), and so prescriptive (orientation tells you where to go, when to go there, what to do, what to talk about, what to eat, and at its worst what to think) that they do more to encourage an attitude of entitlement and a posture of dependency than to help students adjust to a life where they most likely have more independence and more responsibility than they have ever had before.

In short, the assumption behind this flurry of orientational activity seems to be that students can no longer do on their own what they once did with comparative ease--move in, meet people, choose classes, and join whatever clubs or groups they are moved to join. Prolonging adolescence rather than welcoming young adulthood, deferring the moment of individual accountability in order to dramatize an inflated ethic of care, freshman orientation powerfully conveys the idea that students would be lost without it, that they cannot make their own decisions and that they must not be allowed to make mistakes. The importance of freshman orientation is indeed the most important message of freshman orientation: it is in this sense as much an elaborate ad campaign as it is anything else. What it sells is not orientation (are we ever not disoriented?), however, but the illusion of orientation--the image of oneself as part of a community, the impression of college as a kind of home, the belief that with one's tuition one has bought not just the right to pursue an education, but the right to a certain kind and quality of life. Orientation packages a promised experience; it offers a sort of anticipatory nostalgia, a cleverly choreographed taste of what will be that will, like all tastes, quickly pass into a happy memory of what was.

Like all pleasant tastes, this one ultimately creates a taste for itself. It would not be far wrong to see orientation as a product designed to create a craving--for a certain kind of structure, a certain level of support and guidance, a certain type of community. Nor would it be far wrong to see college as a period of time during which many students continually seek out the sorts of structure, support, and sociability that they encountered during the warm and fuzzy days of Welcome Week--or, as many schools tellingly call it, "WOW" (short for Week of Welcome). Colleges capitalize on this, using the seductive warmth of orientation--one in which students are predisposed to welcome that which welcomes them--to orient students politically as well as practically. The elaborate staged greeting of welcome week, one that is literally meant to WOW students, works ultimately to introduce students to the ideological orientation that comes with their new territory. By the end of welcome week, students will know, either consciously or unconsciously, what they need to do, say, be, and believe in order to remain welcome for the next four years.

More soon.