Jim Amidon — It’s a couple of days before the bulk of the Wabash freshmen arrive. About 75-80 upperclassmen are back on campus, cleaning up fraternity houses and straightening up residence halls in anticipation of the arrival of the new class of students.
Those same guys — fraternity officers and residence hall assistants — took most of Thursday to seek and receive useful advice in the form of the Housing Education Leaders Partnership program (HELP).
It’s an aptly named program. The idea is to engage campus leaders in serious discussions with administrators, staff, and alumni — led by keynote speaker Jon Pactor ’71 — to both educate them and provide for them answers to difficult questions.
The program was established when current Dean of Students Mike Raters began as Associate Dean. It’s morphed and changed a little over the years, but the bulk of the HELP program has stayed the same. And its focus of educating leaders has not wavered.
Dean Raters joked that Thursday was both a bad and good day — bad because with the return of students, he had to don coat and tie for the first time all summer, but good because when the students return, so does the energy to campus.
The HELP program is packed from the start. Fraternity officers and RAs fan out to a variety of sessions that range from alcohol education and risk management to how to balance a budget. Some guys attended my session on community service, while rush chairs learned from Dean of Admissions Steve Klein and his staff.
Moments later, doors flung open and students were flying from one room to the next for sessions focused on campus resources. Coaches talked up intramurals; Scott Crawford told students how they can best utilize the services of the Schroeder Career Center; Nurse Carol Lamb explained how the health center works and probably hit on the upcoming flu season.
A half-hour later, a session on “skill sets” unfolded. Campus doctors John Roberts and Scott Douglas shared information on the signs and symptoms of substance abuse; our local fire department teamed with David Morgan of Campus Services to talk fire safety; and IT Services Director Brad Weaver and Webmaster Howard Hewitt gave a fairly chilling presentation on digital footprints in cyberspace, illegal downloading, and the good and bad of social networking sites.
By the end of those three sessions, the Wabash student leaders had been in conversations with nearly 40 members of the administration and staff. Lots of information was exchanged and a few important questions were answered. But moreover, the sessions began to build relationships between the student leaders and the staff who are employed to support them.
Following the teaching and learning sessions, all of the fraternity chapters broke up for individual house meetings with volunteer alumni advisors, while residence assistants met with Associate Dean Will Oprisko. The idea for those breakouts was for concrete plans to be discussed and developed — real, honest-to-goodness group goal-setting.
Late in the day, the students kicked out the administrators and talked among themselves about how Greeks and Independent men can work together to forge campus unity; how officers charged with similar duties in various living units can collaborate to share ideas; and how they can help one another become better leaders.
While the temperature outside still felt a lot like mid-summer, Wabash’s talented and eager student leaders spent the day inside — talking, learning, asking important questions, and getting information they’ll need to guide their living units in the coming year.
Mostly, though, it was a day to build relationships among students, and for students to get to know the staff who will work side-by-side with them in the coming year.
And that’s a pretty HELP-ful way to spend a day.
