WesFest and Students of Color (SOC) Pre-Frosh Weekend have attracted swarms of prospective students ready for a taste of Wesleyan.
WesFest is designed to offer a wide range of activities for pre-frosh and their parents. Events display the campus, science facilities, student groups and faculty. During the course of the weekend, students also host pre-frosh for the night.
“The best thing about WesFest is that it showcases how truly diverse, innovative, and accessible a place Wesleyan is, and what a unique student body we have,” said Assistant Dean of Admission Ben Rhatigan.
Many of the event including student-to-student panels, opportunities to meet students of particular majors, a Greek panel, and a queer forum are designed to maximize pre-frosh interaction with students.
“A lot of the way these [events] are structured are to make sure the pre-frosh do get to meet a lot of Wes students,” said Dana Raviv ’06, a WesFest intern. “[There is a lot] of attention to getting to know Wes students, I guess it’s because the students are the thing Wesleyan has to show off,”
“My hope is that current students will really go out of their way to be open, accessible, and honest, and to demonstrate what a wonderful place Wesleyan can be,” Rhatigan said.
Pre-frosh have said that so far they have been met with enthusiasm and welcoming attitudes by students.
“All the people I’ve met have been really friendly,” said pre-frosh Angelica Cesario. “The campus is also really aesthetically pleasing,”
Activism is another popular Wesleyan activity that will be showcased during WesFest. Last year WesFest occurred soon after the chalking moratorium, resulting in a large amount of chalkings by pre-frosh and students in protest.
“Most of the activism [at last year’s WesFest] dealt with the recent ban on chalking,” said Brian Brotman ’07, who saw them as a pre-frosh. “There was a lot of exquisite chalkings that made me really excited to come here.”
“I feel there’s going to be a lot of activism going around,” said Katiria Calderon ’05, a student of color, SOC Pre-Frosh Weekend coordinator. “I feel this time it might be more about chalking. I think we got a lot of feedback [about last year’s activism]. It made pre-frosh feel like they weren’t being faced with a mask, they really felt they saw the real deal.”
The most popular events of previous WesFests have been the SOC fashion show, the barbecue, the activities fair and student productions. These events are planned again.
“We have all sorts of great stuff planned,” Rhatigan said. “It’s hard to tell who will find what exciting, but we always try to create a schedule with something for everyone.
Unique to this year’s WesFest was last night’s lecture by Joss Whedon ’87. Whedon is the creator, producer, director, and writer for ”Buffy the Vampire Slayer“, ”Angel“, and ”Firefly“, and screenwriter for ”Speed“ and ”Toy Story“.
The SOC Weekend aims to introduce prospective SOC to Wesleyan’s SOC community, as well as the entire community.
”SOC pre-frosh weekend is a great opportunity for students to get a feel for the vibrancy of the SOC communities at Wes,“ Rhatigan said.
About 92 prospective SOC registered.
”The only difference [between SOC Weekend and WesFest] is that WesFest doesn’t guarantee housing,“ Calderon said.
Weekend organizers plan events specifically tailored to SOC even though non-SOC prospective students are also encouraged to attend. Wednesday night’s ”Risky or Risque“ discussion was extremely popular.
”We had a discussion on how hip-hop culture influences sexuality, especially amongst SOC,“ said Cesario, ”It wasn’t just pre-frosh [that participated]. It was current students, faculty and administration.“
”What I appreciated about [Risky or Risque] was that everybody had a different perspective and angle,“ said pre-frosh Suzanne Tran.
”We come up with our own events that are student run. Like chill sessions and Multicultural Weekend,“ Calderon said.
This year the WesFest interns tried to highlight the professors and science programs. There will be a physics demonstration and colloquium, a chemistry colloquia, scientific research drop-in discussion, and tours of the physics labs.
”It’s a liberal arts school so people don’t expect much from the science program, but Wes does have a lot to showoff,“ Raviv said. ”It’s something people don’t know to expect, but it’s there.“
There is no way to properly estimate the number of visiting pre-frosh, but last year about 400 registered to be hosted. Large portions of pre-frosh also don’t register for the event.
”It’s hard to tell who’s going to show up,“ Rhatigan said. ”Some students make a weekend of it with their families and plan weeks in advance, and others just decide on a whim to drive up for the day.“
WesFest and SOC Weekend will continue through Saturday night.