Students who live off campus must attend at least one meeting, in an experimental effort to increase student participation, according to Dean of Men Aaron Petersen. 

In the past, the college has held one meeting for all off-campus students. This year, the college organized the groups by campus involvement so students will not have to attend similar meetings multiple times, according to Dean of Women Rebekah Bollen. Off-campus students received an email in early August indicating which group and meeting time they were assigned. 

“One group is student athletes, the second is Greek, and then the third would be any off-campus student not affiliated with two of those cohorts,” Bollen said. “Athlete teams already have other onboarding meetings as well as Greek organizations. That’s where we found there was the most redundancy.”

The smaller groups aim to make the meetings faster and more applicable to the students in each group, according to Bollen. 

“It was born out of a simple conversation about efficacy and logistics, and making sure that the student groups were not getting overlapping information,” Bollen said. “We realized that if we divided students into three different meeting cohorts, that would allow us to include elements that were specific to each group, not covered in another meeting or training that they had.”

Senior Josie TeSlaa, who is on the volleyball team and a member of the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority, said she has attended many of the same meetings between the two activities, such as the sexual misconduct meeting. 

“I have definitely found myself getting similar talks both as an athlete and being in Greek life,” TeSlaa said. “I love this idea from the college and am excited to see how it plays out. As someone who loves efficiency, I am a fan.”