September is always a busy month at Wilkes University. Students are just getting comfortable on campus, classes are still getting underway and the school had many events going on during this time.
Two of these key events during this month are Family Day and Homecoming weekend.
Family Day, which usually takes place the second or third Saturday of September, is a chance for students to have their families come see their day-to-day lives on campus. It’s great for first-year students who are still adjusting and could use the opportunity to see their families, and it works well for upperclassmen who, as the years go on, can now have more and more of their family come and see them.
Then we have Homecoming weekend, the last weekend of September or the first in October. Everyone knows what Homecoming looks like, with all the events for alumni, students and staff all weekend. Whether that is the football game, any dinner or brunch or the dance, there are events for all.
While they are both in the same month, they take place during different weekends to give space for not only students but for the campus as a whole. That was until this year with the combination of Family Day and Homecoming weekend into one this year, which led to a variety of issues. Many of the problems about the weekend revolved around the same thing, space. This campus is simply not big enough to support both parents and alumni properly.
First and most obvious of all, parking. While no places on campus closed
their parkings lots thankfully, they were all full due to the sheer amount of people. Not only was all the parking
gone, but everywhere you turned, an event was going on. While this can be seen as fun and great for the campus as
a whole, it comes off as disingenuous when on any other weekend on this campus, hardly anything happens.
The campus shouldn’t necessarily feel responsible for putting on events every single weekend for the campus as a whole, but they should take more of a responsibility of making events for the students in the same breadth that they
do for alumni.
The student leaders and clubs should not be solely responsible for creating that; that idea has led to many of our student leaders feeling overwhelmed and underappreciated. That responsibility has to fall more on the offices within this university.
Another issue with the weekend was the complete lack of information given to the students. Many students had to find out everything about parents’ weekend from their parents. This included a change to now charging for events for the weekend.
While it is understandable that there is a need to charge the parents for events being held by the school, students need to also understand this
information. That becomes especially true when parents call their child asking why it is now $20 per person to
preregister for the weekend. This is not even to mention the parking issues for the football game and not widely publicizing to the students about how to get parking.