Flamingos Everywhere!

Erika Dykstra
Flamingos in the Soo?  That can only mean one thing, Laker Orientation.  With over 600 students attending the five sessions, it proved to be a successful program with few complications.  The Laker Orientation program consisted of informative sessions, parent sessions, advising, registration, various social activities for the students and more.
To start things off Dr. Betty Youngblood welcomed students and families during the general session.  Other speakers included Holly Johnson, Director of Campus Life, Allen Case, Assistant Director of Admissions, Bill Whitman, Interim Vice President for Student Affairs, Dr. Harger VicePresidentforAcademicAffairsandProvost, Dr.MichaelDonovan,AssociateProvost and Ms.KathyGood,AdmissionsAdvisor/TransferSpecialist.
From there students said good-bye to their parents and went either to advising and scheduling or to the socialization part with various Laker Activities.  Students who went to the Laker Activities were able to get to know fellow students through bizarre activities such as the human knot and hula-hoop games.  Students also attended a College Life 101 session led by the student orientation leaders.  In these sessions, topics were discussed such as living on campus, differences between high school and college, time management and other information important to college life.  Depending on which orientation session students attended, students either did a scavenger hunt in which they traveled across campus learning the various buildings and also picking up fun items relating to the services available. An example would be This is the place that you would go to cure your homesickness, with this clue students would travel to the Health Care Center where they would pick up their next clue as well as a rubber glove.  The items the students picked up would then be added to the flamingos they decorated.  All students decorated a flamingo as part of team building.  The flamingos were to be decorated with creativity, originality and school spirit.  As most everyone has seen, these flamingos were displayed around campus on the first day of class.  For the last two orientation sessions due to weather, students were not able to travel across campus so they participated in a Lake State jeopardy game with their assigned teams.  It proved to be very competitive but a lot of fun.
When students were not involved in activities they did advising and registration.  The first thing students attended was an academics at LSSU presentation led by Dr. Greg Zimmerman.  From there students met with their academic advisors.  Since the new banner system was put in place, advisors are no longer able to register students in classes anymore.  They instead gave students a sheet with the classes they needed to take and sent them to the Learning Center where roughly 65 computers were set up for students to use the new my.lssu system. 
Overall Laker Orientation was successful again this year; both parents and students enjoyed the experience.
After completing the Laker Orientation program, the freshmen and transfer students were able to move onto campus one day earlier than returning students.  As an added bonus, student orientation leaders, current students, faculty and staff were there to help students move in.  Its been stereotyped that girls always have more stuff than guys, well, I dont know, some guys had two or more car / truck loads, and even a 30-inch screen television!   It was a long exhausting day for everyone, but everyone managed to get through it with minor aches and pains.
