“Welcome Week Rep Fatigue Syndrome”

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When I was in first year, I hated Welcome Week.

I’m a naturally small and quiet person who gets easily lost in crowds, so the tradition of thousands of students swarming small fields and screaming at each other is a surefire way to erase me from any and all social activities going on at the same time.

I didn’t get along with the reps in my faculty, was generally neglected by the off-campus reps that were supposed to show me around, and after the week was finished, I could safely say that I made no new friends. My Welcome Week story is not an uncommon one, and I’ve finally pinpointed why: Welcome Week Rep Fatigue Syndrome.

WWRFS is a problem that has hounded our student body for years now, and it’s time we did something to stop it.

Contrary to my horrible Welcome Week experience, come the spring of first year, I still decided to apply, and consequently become, a faculty representative for the next two years of my undergrad. And it was during that fall of 2013 that I experienced WWRFS for the first time.

Representing the faculty of Humanities, I was a “Hummer” (a name my dear former faculty should look into changing for solely innuendo reasons) and I was ready to have a great Welcome Week this time around. But shortly into it, I grew tired. At the time, Welcome Week occurred during regular class schedules, my part-time job at The Sil had just started, and our faculty planners and reps were in the middle of a melodramatic and unnecessary power trip. I was sick and tired, but I put on a smile for first years and tried my best to have a great time.

A few of my housemates were also repping that year for residences and the Society of Off-Campus Students. They had it worse. Even though they enjoyed helping first years, waking up and going to sleep at ungodly hours all while trying to keep up with schoolwork and work-work, their bodies were only allowing them to do so much to get the people going.

Over the course of the week, there were reps around me coughing up a tasty mélange of bodily fluids from the amount of screaming and yelling, and those who weren’t hit with this plague were starting to snap at each other and first years from a lack of sleep and exhaustion.

By closing ceremonies, everyone seemed to have come down with a combination of strep throat and possibly SARS, and we were all excited to hibernate over the weekend before our next round of classes started.

I know way too many people who had comparably bad first-year Welcome Week experiences, and it’s because you can’t expect a group of exhausted over-worked students to put on a week-long spectacle without a few people suffering from the side effects — and more often than not, those people are first years.

With applications for Welcome Week representatives currently circulating across social media, the emphasis seems to be on “first years first,” but we can’t forget to also throw the needs of reps somewhere in there. Welcome Week representatives are not paid to work 12+ hour days, so the least they should get is a relatively healthy experience. Whether this means bringing on board more students to lighten the loads of each rep, or reassessing the number of events that take place during the week, our university and students union should strive to make this an event that all parties can enjoy. First years should be first. But if reps are neglecting their health, no one is going to feel like they’re coming in first.

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