New Student Orientation finished up its second week of sessions Wednesday as College of Education and College of Natural Resources students left campus after a day and a half of programming, but reactions to some changes to the program have been mixed as its focus has shifted.

NSO Director Gabe Wical said the program now places a priority on how new students fit into the larger University community.

“This day and a half can’t be everything,” Wical said. “The primary thing is we want to let [new students] understand is about the expectations of being a member of the community so we establish those early on with what the policies are, expectations about the [Free Expression] Tunnel, being a responsible community member, and about diversity — the values we hold as a campus.”

Emily Pitman, a freshman in political science, said learning about policies and rules were a big part of her experience in NSO but said she felt a lot of what was covered, especially registration, could have been done online to ease the cramping of the daily schedule.

“They packed way too much stuff into today,” Pitman said of her first day in the program.

Steven Melzer, an undeclared freshman, said he felt registration took priority during orientation, along with showing students where buildings are, and Melzer said the staff did a good job of orienting him with campus.

But one of the most noticed changes to NSO was the cutting of the organization fair, which Wical said was a combination of wanting to streamline the process for new students and because of a lack of space.

Janiece Jamison, a freshman in English, said NSO made it seem there were many organizations on campus (more than 500 according to Wical) but said the limited information fair on Talley Student Center’s fourth floor didn’t seem to be enough.

“I’d like to see some more student organizations,” Jamison said. “From what I saw it seemed like there was a lot [of organizations] but i know there’s more. It would be good to see them present themselves more.”

According to Wical, the reason why more organizations weren’t at the information fair was because they weren’t invited, but he said there was also a misperception about how many organizations have participated in the organization fair in past years. Wical estimated it was about 40, with about a third being college specific, another third being religiously based.

“A third were religiously based and then a third were a combination of the official designation is recognized student organizations, so Student Media, Greek Life, UAB, IRC …those groups have continued to be invited this year, so we’ve kept those in but the other organizations — we’ve kind of shifted our focus as far as getting involved,” Wical said. “The message we want to deliver at orientation is that it’s important to get involved, the SORC office is available for how to get involved [and] there are organizational fairs through Wolfpack Welcome Week and through the SORC office.”

Jamison said getting acquainted with organization may be something students can do later.

“I guess that kind of stuff you learn as you go along,” she said.

Which is exactly what Wical and the SORC office anticipate will happen.

“[The SORC office’s] suggestion was to reallly push those fairs they have during the fall,” Wical said, as Wolfpack Welcome Week and fairs throughout the semester will present opportunities for organizations to recruit.

And while organizations will lose the opportunity to meet with students during their first day on campus, Wical said an emphasis on campus involvement in general can serve new students better than having many groups lined up at booths to recruit new members.

“We want to talk about involvement in general — why it’s important — but not just give them a sample of some of the organizations available. [The number of groups that came to the organization fair] wasn’t really representative of what was really out there,” Wical said. “It’s valuable for those groups who have people on campus who are able to recruit, but one of the things that we realized when were going through this model change is we can’t be everythign to everybody. We can’t make our orientation model fit every student organization.”

Wical said the reaction by campus organizations to the exempting of groups was overstated, and that the focus of orientation was meant to be on new students, not on organizations.

“More has been made of the cutting of the organization fair than it really is,” Wical said, adding the justification for not inviting specific clubs and organizations. “It was for the number of people that are interested in club X, that we shouldn’t dedicate a significant portion of our resources or time at orientation to that one group. It wasn’t meant to penalize any of the groups that were participating it just was something we thought needed to be done in the fall. We have to make the decision that we think is best, and this is the decision we thought was best for the incoming students. Sometimes that doesn’t benefit the student groups on campus and that’s part of the reality. Our primary purpose isn’t to serve those student organizations, our purpose is to serve those incoming students.”

Wical said one of the reasons behind the misunderstanding about the information fair was a breakdown in communication between NSO, SORC and campus organizations, as NSO sent an e-mail to SORC to be distributed to student leaders, but he’s not sure what message was sent.

“To be honest, I don’t know what eventually got sent out,” Wical said. “I think a different message got sent out than the message we intended.”

When asked how the cutting of club sports from the organizational fair with club rugby as an example, Wical questioned how many students would have signed up for the club had they been at the fair.

“How many students do you think signed up for rugby?” Wical asked. “My point is we can’t have — our decision was not to have all of these groups as part of the information fair because it was just too much information.  It really wasn’t serving the purpose. For us to have it 17 times these were the decisions we had to make and not all of those decisions benefit everybody on campus and that’s just part of the reality.”

But new students aren’t aware of the program’s focus, Wical said.

“Communicating [our focus] with the student is the part that we’re still working on — to say ‘not everything is going to be here, but this is where you need to go if you want to get involved,’ ” he said.

Katie Nehm, a sophomore in communication and an NSO counselor, said students in her group have had lots of questions about specific groups on campus, but they don’t have a resource to get their questions answered.

“I know a lot of girls have asked me about Greek life and they want to know about a specific organization because it’s kind of a legacy in their family and when they get to talk to only just one person from Greek LIfe, they don’t get to figure that out,” Nehm said. “A lot of people were wondering about club sports, too.”

Nehm, who plays club soccer, said she struggled to find information about club sports during her freshman year even with an organization fair during her orientation

“When I went on the Web site to look for tryouts and everything, Campus Rec hadn’t even updated the Web site so I didn’t find out the information until the spring,” she said. “I feel like if we had more people here they would know their specific about what they really want to do. They’re missing out on interest-specific things. They’re aware of the student organization resource center, but if they actually take advantage of it is a different story. I feel like if there’s actually things they can see, they’re more likely to get involved.”