It’s not every day that several hundred students gather to reflect on climate change through dance and discussion.

For the first time in the University’s history, 550 new members of the student body—the class of 2012 and transfer students—gathered on Andrus Field last Friday as part of the University’s Feet to the Fire initiative. In conjunction with the event’s message of unity, Middletown residents, University faculty and staff also joined the collaboration.

“It was a big experiment—I don’t know of any other school who has attempted to create a common experience,” said Director of the Center for the Arts Pamela Tatge. “I am looking forward to hearing from students as to the impact. Most of all, I hope it impacts how they look at the courses that they will select. That it immediately said to them that there are many ways to view the subject matter.”

The event began with an “Ice” section, in which students were offered t-shirts and ice cream and concluded with “Fire,” in which Prometheus spun fire. Members of the Middletown cyclist community, faculty, staff and students rode on bicycles and even unicycles to demonstrate alternative forms of transportation.

In between “Ice” and “Fire,” renowned professional dance group the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange organized students to perform an original dance that incorporated different elements of the climate crisis. The performers separated students into six groups, each representing an effect or site of climate change such as cyclones, oceans and glacial melting.

In only 10 minutes, all of the participants were organized to perform Lerman’s dance piece. The performers then assembled along a rope that outlined the results of a poll all first-year students had taken on global warming, the data from which Professor of Earth and Environmental Science Barry Chernoff inputted into a histogram that now sits in Usdan’s photo gallery.

The rope was constructed from the students’ “wish ties,” which students created during hall meetings to document their aspirations for their time at the University and their wishes for the planet. During orientation week, first-year students also participated in a series of conversations about climate change, as part of the First Year Matters program. More than 600 students attended lectures given by faculty in residence halls, which marked the first meeting of the new students and faculty in University dormitories.

After the participatory dance, Chernoff made a call to action for the new students to maintain a commitment to combat the climate crisis.

“I’m hoping that this is just the beginning,” Chernoff said in an interview with The Argus. “I think that the challenge that we have is to take our energies, our deep thoughts and best ideas and try to channel these into a positive way. This event helps us to look forward to the future to see how we can make a difference, to adapt to changing conditions by creating something that is even better.”

Overall, students enjoyed the event and said that the Common Moment presentation was an exciting introduction to life at the University.

“It was awesome—we danced with our RA,” said Raghu Appasani ’12. “It gave us a good introduction to how active the school is, especially about social issues like global economic problems.”

Samuel Westerfeld ’12 echoed Appasani’s sentiments.

“It was an ice breaker,” Westerfeld said. “I did really like the discussion we had. It was fun to be able to tell my friends from back home that for the first night we did a dance for global warming.”

Shelby Arnold ’12 agreed, summing up the purpose of the event.

“The Common Moment showed that people can come together and use other forms of expression like art and dance to get a community together,” Arnold said.

The First Year Matters program will address issues of climate change throughout the year. The next event is the fourth annual “Where On Earth Are We Going?” environmental symposium, which will take place during parent’s weekend on Oct. 18.

For more information, please visit http://www.wesleyan.edu/cfa/feettothefire/index.html