College head start Part one - A proposal for orientation emphasizing education as process

The six Rice colleges are once again facing the complex task of integrating the individual into the group life of an academic community. We say "complex" because this process must be accomplished while maintaining the proper amount of respect for the "one-ness" of each person in the sea of new faces which composes the second largest freshman class in Rice's history. The Rice freshman is a rare being indeed: one of the small minority to survive a stringent process of screening and selection which chooses the "cream of the crop" of all those aspiring to study in this particular grove of academe. While the University selects each freshman as a potential Scholar, and educates him in an appropriate manner, the colleges can fulfill the ideal function of humanizing the individual. The goals of most of the orientation programs this year aire tied in with this desire to preserve the sanctity (and sanity) of the individual through the often trying years of his stay at Rice. A great deal of creativity is evident in the current orientation effor t , but traditional questions are still asked: What are the results that each college is trying to at tain? Will any of the varied approaches work to those ends? Is a week too long for freshman orientation? Too short? The questions this year have been left, as in the past, largely unanswered. One of the difficulties in evaluating this freshman week as an effor t of the colleges is that the University has pre-empted a vast portion of the time. One wonders why two entire mornings are consumed in discussions of classes, when the need could have been served by preparing written reports on each course, and then allowing for informal discussions between freshmen, upperclassmen iti the colleges, and faculty associates. Placement examinations have again moved into the freshman week picture in an overpowering way, evoking memories of the "good old days" when the week was a mass of tests in trigonometry and literary composition. Two separate afternoon are given over to registration, precluding other freshman activities in either of those periods. Certainly many of these f University activities are necessary, but the question is one of timing. Some of the colleges wish to try their own experiments in education in this week, but their efforts are stifled because See NECESSITY on p. 6 THE