News
Color War theme brings competition to orientation
By Jessica Moulite '14
September 6, 2012
On Saturday, Aug. 25, Orientation began for the Class of 2016 at Hamilton College. Unlike previous years, however, Residential Life ran Orientation and all of its programming instead of Student Activities.
“The major changes were the increased role of RAs, the introduction of Step Up!, the bystander intervention program, and Color Wars events including the carnival,” said Assistant Dean of Students for Residential Life Travis Hill regarding the change of leadership.
In addition to the incorporation of Resident Advisors, Orientation also featured greater collaboration between the Orientation Leaders and Orientation Coordinators. Orientation Coordinators Sarah Pfund ’14, Sidika Kajtezovic ’14, Matt Langan ’14 and Trevor Howe ’14 worked for months with the Residential Life staff to create an Orientation theme and activities.
The theme of this year’s Orientation was Color Wars, a campus-wide competition that divided the nine dorms that house first-years into 10 colors. The dorms then competed against one another for the most Color Wars points in a series of events and the title of Hamilton College’s first ever Color Wars champions.
Each OL and the RA they were paired with were assigned to approximately 10 new students or transfers from the same dorm for the duration of Orientation week and helped facilitate new students’ smooth transition into life on the Hill.
“Students have something to bond over. If Color Wars helped people break out of their shells, expand their friend groups and explore Hamilton, then it did the job it was supposed to do,” said Pfund. “Orientation was fun and a great way to meet people,” said Njideka Ofoleta ’16.
The Color Wars activities included field games such as dodge ball, wiffle ball and kickball as well as trivia, carnival games, a scavenger hunt, bingo and other contests throughout the week.
“I loved that my orientees constantly had the opportunity to meet other new students and branch out,” said OL Jaime Leiva ’14.
At the Color Wars closing ceremony, the Hot Pink team from McIntosh was proclaimed the winner. The prize for first place is $250 to spend on a party for the winners’ dorm with their OLs and RAs.
“I thought that Color Wars was a fun way to begin Orientation. Personally, I loved representing McIntosh and am proud to say that we won Color Wars,” said Courtney Kaplar ’16.
When asked what could be improved upon, Kaplar said finding more ways of being challenged, besides just physically with outdoor games. Another critique of Orientation from some first year students was the amount of Color Wars activities in one day, in addition to other mandatory talks in Wellin Hall that they attended.
“We tried to provide a variety of activities so some things were appealing to any student regardless of their tastes and interests,” said Hill.
All in all, the first year of Orientation being run by Residential Life was an achievement. Matt Langan is hopeful for the future of Orientation.
“This year’s orientation was awesome! We were able to build on previous orientations to make this year such a success,” said Langan. There is little doubt that next year’s Orientation will be even better.