Our View: Freshmen orientation needs some tweaking

By Sheila Moussavi 2007

Last week, freshmen from Holmes and Peet Junior Highs came in buses to get a glimpse of high school life. As is tradition, the students spent part of Tuesday touring the school, speaking to high-schoolers and attending the annual activities fair.

For the past few years, the fair ahs been a time when freshmen visit various booths representing the different clubs and elective classes at CF High, hopefully giving them a chance to learn about potential activities for the next three years.

Unfortunately, this time is often misused. As a method of ensuring that the students reach as many tables as possible, the school offers prizes available only to students who visit every booth. This method, however, tends to have the opposite of its intended effect. Tempted by the opportunity to win prizes, the students’ objective has suddenly shifted from actually learning about the classes, to circling the gym at top speed in hopes of reaching as many booths as possible.

We think the competition aspect of the activities fair is completely counter-productive. Not only are the majority of students now absorbed in the process of getting around the gym as quickly as possible, but the few students who actually care about the fair are over-shadowed by the rush of students running through each booth. We think it would be much more logical to remove the opportunity to win prizes and let interested students get the most out of this potentially useful experience.