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6 September 2002
uwRyan.com This website is meant to provide value to UW student by delivering information. It will also supplement the column that I write for Imprint by providing extra information on some of the topics about which I will write in addition to the text of each column. Please provide feedback on what I write as well as give me suggestions of topics to cover. You can send e-mail to me to ryan[at]uwryan[dot]com. |
Five years of PACOCommittee changed frosh week significantly
Since PACO began five years ago, the 1997 frosh class has graduated and few students at school today know what a frosh week without PACO is like. Because of this students can’t well make a comparison of the experience, but they can better judge it on principle. PACO is the Provost’s Advisory Committee on Orientation and is the term that people use to refer to the reports it produces and the changes and restrictions that follow. The committee first met after the 1997 frosh week, but significant changes were made as a part of restructuring that year. For that frosh week Federation Orientation Committee was formed as well as Orientation Advisory Committee. Residences and faculty orientation committees were prevented from scheduling events at the same time, and REV and Village 1 were required to run their activities jointly whereas before they had been separate. Leaders were no longer allowed to drink alcohol during orientation week events. Over the fall of 1997, the committee of 10, five of which were students, met to develop the report. The report was released in December. All frosh leaders were required to undergo four training sessions: hazing/initiation/peer pressure, alcohol and drug awareness, sexual harassment and diversity, and the role of the orientation leader/safety and liability issues. The maximum price for frosh kits was set as well as 10 restrictions for events where alcohol is served. Also that year, the toga party was held on campus where before it was held at Bingeman’s. In 1999 Feds collected all frosh week fees on behalf of the committees and redistributed them. Each orientation group was restricted to one wet event, which means that frosh would have a maximum of three in frosh week — with their faculty, their residence and at the toga party. This year an administrative fee was added to frosh kit fees and the Student Life Co-ordinator, a university employee, was made co-chair with Feds Special Events/Orientation Co-ordinator. Catherine Scott says that next year there will be no alcohol in frosh week: “Well we have to take alcohol out of it next year. I don’t know how we could do it when 90 per cent [of frosh] are underage. I don’t know how we can run wet events.” Some students feel that the restrictions that come with PACO have caused good aspects of frosh week to be lost along with the bad. There is also concern that the fun for some frosh is ruined to accommodate the sensitivities and sensibilities of others; what is an appropriate degree of separation and differentiation between the experience for each frosh and what purposes does frosh week fulfil. Last year Tom Waterhouse commented on uwstudent.org, “The problem with PACO is that the ‘guidelines’ are too restrictive. Thanks to PACO, Conrad Grebel can no longer run a long-standing, traditional Frosh Week event. They call it ‘hazing.’ I think it’s equally fair to call PACO a bunch of PC thugs pissing on the place I call home.” Commenting on what she considers to be hazing, Scott said, “It’s creating a situation where someone feels coerced physically or socially or by the feeling that they won’t be one of the gang to do something that is demeaning to them or against their own better judgement of what they would actually do themselves, but they feel so unsure of themselves and so without confidence that they do something that they really don’t want to do in order to feel that they belong.” “I think there's been huge creative things going on I mean engineering junkyard wars what a better way to atach you to your group or make you feel a part of your faculty and profession. A favulous event that is there's everything positive about that event what could in terms of bringing people together.” “Contrast that with the cothesline game which was a big arts issue, how does that bring people together does mutual pain cause you to feel like a group or does pride in what you're doing make you feel lie you belong here and this is a great place and thesea re great colleagues.” Ryan O’Connor believes that the guidelines are not properly implemented. “My concern is not with some of the PACO guidelines — many of which are necessary, including the restriction on leaders’ drinking,” he said. “However, being a former frosh week participant as both a frosh and a leader, my concerns rest with the interpretation of PACO by some parties involved. Leaders will sometimes enforce rules which aren’t set out through PACO guidelines because of their own interpretation of the rules.” “It seems as if the pendulum has swung from one direction — pre-PACO, leaders were acting inappropriately; post-PACO, the pendulum has swung so far in the other direction that participants don’t know what type of behaviour is acceptable. Restrictions exist without even being written down.” PACO has been around for five years and each year frosh experience the results without really experiencing the changes that have come before. |