In the March 30 Reflector, Ryan Thurmond took it upon himself to attack the new freshman experience program talk that has been growing around campus.
Thurmond asserts things that are blatantly false and shows a desperate lack of knowledge on an MSU freshman experience program. I would like to clear some of his accusations and show why freshman experience would have drastic impacts on the university.
Thurmond’s uneducated description of the freshman year experience plan is completely wrong.
The program is not designed to teach sex-ed or balancing your checkbook, but rather spread the proud history of our great school and its accomplishments.
Most students don’t know that the original Bully is buried on the 50 yard line or that the cafeteria was designed to look like a church so that it wouldn’t be bombed if we were invaded during World War II.
History makes students proud of this institution.
Before I started being involved in SA, I could have cared less about MSU. Now that I’ve spent the last two years involved, they’ll have to push me out the door to get me to leave.
Involvement on campus is another position Thurmond takes, falsely asserting that students don’t want to get involved.
This accusation is absurd.
Almost every student wants to do things on campus and be involved; many just don’t know how. I would have never been involved with SA had it not been by random chance that I received an e-mail one day and went to apply for a position.
Since I’ve been involved, several new clubs have found their way into my life; clubs I never would have known about if I hadn’t been in SA.
Many other students don’t get a chance to learn they exist or how to join them.
The freshman experience class would allow them to learn about things such as clubs.
It’s painful for me to admit that one in every five freshmen here doesn’t stay. We need a solution to this problem!
We sent three cabinet members this year to a forum on the freshman experience class to learn about the impact it has made on other campuses. The results are stunning: retention rates shot through the roof and freshman involvement did, too.
You can take you halfhearted assumptions somewhere else because these are figures backed up by numbers from across the country.
Thurmond argues that students won’t want to go to the class. I tend to disagree.
Students will want to go, not because of some attendance policy or daily quizzes, but because of the personal involvement students will have with their class and with the teacher.
It amazes me how many people don’t have a network or friends at MSU. Part of this class’s purpose is to set students up with a base to work off of and learn with others about things to do and how to get involved with them.
Nobody likes to go to a club meeting for the first time by themselves. Now they will have people to go and sit by.
Many students who decide to pack up and go home on the weekends have no idea of all of the things that happen here on weekends. This encourages them to stay in Starkville for weekends, to hang out with friends and participate in club events-which there are tons of.
It simply stuns me that someone would make such blanket incorrect statements about this policy. Just because Thurmond hasn’t had this class doesn’t mean he can criticize a program that may help our fellow students.
I’m proud to declare that this campus has the best student body population of any school I’ve ever visited; it’s unfortunate that many people don’t stick around long enough to discover that.
Freshman experience is a way to kick start involvement and social relationships that Mississippi State desperately needs.
Brian Freedman is a senior management major. He is the SA assistant chief of staff.