Welcome back, Mac

Over the years, Frost Weeks, Light Up the Nights and Homecomings have continuously helped McMaster grow together and celebrate. While there are smaller events sprinkled throughout the year, such as coffee houses and club-related events, they typically only include students with a small set of interests and lack the diversity of large-scale events. The magnitude and anticipation that big MSU events have can’t be matched.

Welcome Week passed, and disappointment followed. Not that it wasn’t a great event, I’m sure a large portion of incoming students will cite it for a long time as being their favourite university experience, but that it doesn’t unite the students as successfully as these other events.

If the point was to include returning students, then the advertising and social media wasn’t there to support that purpose. The McMaster Students Union Facebook page had a total of five posts in August concerning the week — all of them focused on the concerts. The McMaster Welcome Week page was centered on first years with lots of coverage on the reps, first-year experiences and an Issuu featuring tips for starting university.

The MSU Campus Events page had a mixed message. The schedule was posted on Aug. 10. 17 days before the first events, the selection of people who saw the post were able to plan out their schedules well ahead of time. However, the extensive coverage about Airbands only began the day of, Bedracers was previewed only two hours before the event and no other events were featured. While Facebook isn’t the only social media avenue, the MSU often doesn’t focus on alternate web channels. The #McSU sidebar persisted instead of #MacWW2016 on their site, and there is still no Instagram link next to their other social media. There simply wasn’t enough promotion.

If the point is to only include upper years for specific events, why is that the case? A constant bubble already persists for a lot of first years in being confined to faculty and residence cliques. The previously mentioned MSU events and general clubs do a decent job of introducing students to the community at large, but the question becomes whether these alone are good enough.

In Patrick Deane’s “Forward with Integrity” letter in 2011, he notes that “We are an institution devoted to the cultivation of human potential, which we believe cannot be realized by individuals in isolation from one another, from their history or their imagined future, from the society which surrounds them, or from the physical universe which sustains them. Our programs and activities will reflect this comprehensive view.” While intended for a larger discussion on the school’s academic identity, it can be directly applied to the separation that happens between incoming students and the rest of the community that aren’t reps.

There is a big opportunity to introduce new students to a large MSU event early on with the rest of the university outside of sports and concerts.

We already have examples of McMaster being able to serve the entire community with Frost Week and Light Up the Night. While it’s difficult to advocate for fixing what isn’t broken, Welcome Week could serve the purpose of introducing new students to one another and bringing the entire community together at the same time.

Even if none of the events change, simply promoting these events to returning students would help with things like lining the sides of the PJ Parade, give Justin Monaco-Barnes a few more trips to the dunk tank and reminding people they can donate to Shinerama. Even if it was always the case, Welcome Week should feel more like everyone can contribute.