2,000 FRESHMEN DUE IN ONEONTA
SUNY, Hartwick Students
Come Back On Same Day
By JENNIFER HILL • Special to www.ALLOTSEGO.com
ONEONTA – Some 2,000 freshman were returning here Wednesday, Aug. 21, arriving the same day at SUNY Oneonta and Hartwick College.
That’s 1,525 at SUNY and 425 at Hartwick.
But arriving students are already looking beyond settling in.
For instance, as part of their orientation this year, SUNY Oneonta students have to learn to think fast. “Fast O,” that is.
“The ‘Fast O’ is the athletic logo,” said Kim MacLeod, SUNY Oneonta associate director of communications. “Students in shirts with the ‘Fast O’ colors – white, red and black – will run out in the afternoon during the picnic and create a human ‘Fast O’.”
The picnic, part of SUNY’s Founders’ Day celebration on Thursday, Sept 4, celebrating the start of the college’s 130th anniversary year.
At Hartwick, the student body will be looking forward to the True Blue Weekend, its largest alumni-engagement event of the year, which is being moved up to mid-September instead of early October, three weeks earlier than usual. “It just worked out that the home game was happening earlier,” said David Lubell, Hartwick College’s media manager.
True Blue Weekend will begin on Thursday, Sept. 19 with the Hawk Night Fever Pep Rally, featuring the mascot, Swoop the Hawk, kicks off the weekend in the Lambros Arena. The weekend will also include the Athletic Hall of Fame induction and the alumni weekend, as well as a memorial gathering.
And with her first year as SUNY president under her belt, Dr. Barbara Jean Morris will be officially will be inaugurated as president of the college on Saturday, Oct. 5.
Two special programs will honor Dr. Morris’ inauguration with subjects that Macleod called “near and dear to Dr. Morris’ heart” – feeding the hungry and surviving domestic violence.
The first, a nonperishable food drive, will invite students to donate canned foods at various locations on campus, with 60 percent of the collection going to Oneonta-area food pantries and 40 percent to the campus food pantry in Hunt Union.
The second program is part of a SUNY-wide Got Your Back initiative, which is creating comfort kits for victims and survivors of violence while learning methods of better preventing and responding to violence.
Hartwick College will have its Opening Convocation on Thursday this week while SUNY will have its Pass Through the Pillars on Saturday, Aug. 25, when first-year students walk through the pillars of the college’s original building, Old Main, “to follow in the footsteps of their predecessors.”