Coming into the university, students are often overwhelmed with the start-of-year activities they are expected to participate in. Between moving in, Rush, Howdy Week, school starting, clubs beginning to meet and sporting events, freshmen have a full plate to juggle.
This full schedule is a carefully-designed ploy to keep new students busy and not thinking about the friends and family they left at home. The university does a really great job at quickly integrating students into the student body. Students are inundated with many opportunities so that they are able to meet new people, make friends, develop their Horned Frog pride and become accustomed to an entirely different lifestyle with as few hiccups as possible.
One result of this crazy hodgepodge of first semester ‘firsts’ is that freshmen are often sucked into having a crazy schedule with no relaxation or reflection time built in. Values are dropped as the freedom of a college lifestyle becomes a reality. As values are dropped, bad decisions tend to be made and before one knows it, they have completely lost their identity.
This problem is where upcoming juniors Graham McMillan and Tiffany Charters are hoping to step in. The two have designed a new, student-led, four-day nondenominational Christian retreat, Exodus.
Exodus would take place during Labor Day weekend in Glen Rose, Texas, catering to about 100 members of the incoming class of 2016.
Exodus would focus on achieving three main goals: connecting freshmen with other students, helping them settle into faith communities and establishing mentors to help guide them during their time at the university.
Some students have questioned certain aspects of Exodus, including a charge that Exodus is planned so early in the year that it will simply add to the hectic and rushed lives of new students. They also argue that students would not have enough time to find friends to attend with because the camp is so early in the year.
These concerns are exactly why the camp is situated at the perfect time of the year for impressionable young freshmen. Since students will be attending the camp with fellow Christian students concerned with keeping their faith strong as they enter college, they will be able to forge lasting friendships built on similarities, as opposed to simply convenient relationships that tend to characterize the beginning of the school year.
Furthermore, having a Christian camp so close to the beginning of the school year will stress the importance of incorporating one’s faith into all aspects of life. Faith-oriented camps tend to focus on quiet time and self-reflection to such a degree that they actually temper the craziness of a hectic new life.
Helping to renew and uphold faith is also a great way to provide freshmen with the tools required to build a new support system to take the place of their parents and high school friends. With God, their fellow campers and their counselors, students would likely return from the camp exhilarated and even more excited about their upcoming year at the university than those students who stayed on campus for the extended weekend.
The camp is not directly associated with the university, nor will it receive any special funding or assistance. Exodus will be completely optional for incoming students.
Because returning students need not worry about the camp’s interference in their own daily lives, they should support it as it gets off the ground and hopefully becomes an annual tradition for certain first-year students.
Whether one is religious or not, all university students can certainly recognize that college is a completely different animal from high school. If Exodus can serve as a locus for even a handful of uncertain freshmen students to set their feet firmly on university soil, then it is a good thing that will ultimately benefit far more than just the student campers and should be given full backing and encouragement by students, faculty and staff.
Allana Wooley is a freshman anthropology and history double major from Marble Falls.
