Dons off duty: Sarah Campos and Lindsay Wilson (Correction: Kait Jongsma) gave their teeth a workout during the Right Fit Rodeo at Village I on Wednesday. Besides bobbing for apples and joining in a horseshoe tournament, some 300 dons and other residence staff were able to chow down on a country-style spread served up by food services, while music came from the Bobby Jones Band, a local country-and-western group. "The event was planned to thank everyone for their hard work over the summer, to welcome new staff and student staff to the department, and to get everyone excited about the start of a new term," says Bronwyn Burchell of housing.

First-year students arrive this weekend

Everybody ready? Some 5,000 new first-year students will be arriving at UW this weekend, and it take a village — or several Villages — to welcome them, get them settled in, orient them, equip them and get them ready for the first day of classes on September 13.

Thousands of upper-year students will also be streaming back to the Waterloo, Kitchener and Cambridge campuses over the weekend and all next week, but they already have WatCards and know how to use them, can tell the difference between a PAC and a PAS, and know their way into (and out of) the tunnels. So the emphasis for the next few days will be on the newcomers.

About 80 per cent of them will live in on-campus residences, which are full to capacity this term as they are every fall. Arrivals are staggered for the sake of reducing traffic jams. Students have been advised to arrive on Sunday if they’re living in the north and south quads of Ron Eydt Village or Village I, the odd-numbered floors and north quads in UW Place, the Minota Hagey Residence (VeloCity), and the east wing of Mackenzie King Village. Arrival day is Monday for the other parts of REV, V1, UWP and MKV, and for Columbia Lake Village.

“Several hundred Department of Housing and Residences employees and volunteers will be on hand to help incoming students move into their new home,” says Chris Read, who heads the whole operation as University Housing Officer. That would include the residence dons, who have been on campus this week being trained on everything from emergency procedures to the complications of Ramadan, which calls on Muslim students to fast during daylight hours this month.

Read adds: “One new initiative this year is called Books in Rez. It allowed students to purchase their books through the Bookstore, pay on-line, and pick them up in their residence when they check in — getting your keys and your books handed to you at the same time. This was an initiative of our Desk Services crew and the Bookstore, and we got about 250 orders, a great success.”

Another new project this year was the Move-in Engagement Project, which invited faculty and staff members to meet new students as they arrive. “We're expecting close to 40 faculty and senior staff to be on hand over the weekend in various shifts,” Read said yesterday.

The residences’ web site includes suggested lists of “what to bring” and, more urgently, “what not to bring”, including candles and incense, weapons, pets, “your own furniture”, heaters, air conditioners and cooking appliances. The new students will no doubt meet their dons as they arrive, but organized floor meetings (with pizza) are set for 4:30 Monday, and that’s the beginning of orientation activities for most students. Before the night is over, they'll also experience the PlayFair games event on the Village green, and a welcome-to-residence concert.

Over the weekend, though, all sorts of administrative and support services will be in operation for their benefit. Some details:

• Residences and off-campus housing office, Student Life Centre lower level, open 9:00 to 4:00 Sunday and Monday.
• WatCard office, SLC, open Sunday and Monday 8:30 to 4:30.
• REVelation cafeteria, Ron Eydt Village, open Sunday 11:00 to 7:00, Monday 8:00 to 3:00.
• Mudies cafeteria, Village I, open Sunday 10 a.m. to 12:30 a.m., Monday 4:30 to 5:30 a.m., 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. to 12:30 a.m.
• Tim Hortons, SLC, open Monday 9:30 to 3:00 (24-hour operation will begin Tuesday morning).
• Tim Hortons, South Campus Hall, open Monday 11:30 to 3:30.
• Parking services office, Commissary building, open Monday 8:00 to 4:00.
• Bookstore, Waterloo Store, and Write Stuff, South Campus Hall, open Saturday 12 noon to 4 p.m., Sunday closed, Monday open 12 noon to 5 p.m. E-Smart, SCH, open Saturday 12 to 4, closed Sunday and Monday.
• CampusTech, SLC, open Sunday and Monday 12 noon to 5 p.m.
• Feds Used Books, SLC, open Saturday-Monday 9:00 to 5:00.

In general, the university’s offices and services will be closed on Monday, the Labour Day holiday, except for those involved in serving the newly arrived students — and except for a few essential services that never shut down: UW police, 519-888-4911 (ext. 22222 on campus); Student Life Centre, turnkey desk 519-888-4434 (ext. 84434 on campus); maintenance emergencies ext. 33793. The Dana Porter and Davis Centre libraries are open noon to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, but closed Monday. The Columbia Icefield is open Saturday and Sunday, closed Monday. The Physical Activities Complex is closed for athletics use all weekend.

Central registration for Orientation Week is in the PAC on Sunday from 10:00 to 4:30 or Monday from 8:30 to 5:00. Registration will reopen Monday from 7 to 11 p.m. at the Ask-Me booth in the Student Life Centre multi-purpose room, and continues there for the rest of the week, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily. First-year students will need their WatCard to register.

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Single, sexy, and ready to move in

Everybody on campus, and off campus for that matter, is invited to the premiere performance of this year's "Single and Sexy" (left) this morning. It's the 22nd year for what's described as "a collective play about attitudes", presented each year during orientation to get first-year students thinking and talking about sexual issues and a whole lot more: homesickness, drugs, plagiarism, eating disorders, cultural diversity, suicide. "All the music and choreography has been updated," says Sandra Gibson of health services, co-producer for S&S this year. "All new songs and moves, very current." Today's free performance, by an all-student cast, starts at 10:00 in the Humanities Theatre. There will be three performances a day next week, Tuesday through Thursday, with thousands of new students scheduled to be in the audiences.

With students moving in over the next few days, both at this university and at neighbouring Wilfrid Laurier, the city authorities are taking some steps to improve traffic flow: "The City of Waterloo will be redirecting traffic temporarily on Lester and Spruce streets during the busy move-in time for students to ease congestion and keep traffic flowing safely. Portions of Lester and Spruce streets will be one way. No left turns onto these streets from University Avenue and Columbia Street. No left turns onto University Avenue from Lester Street, and no through traffic. This pilot program will run on Sept. 5, 6, 11 and 12."

Speaking of traffic flow: "GO Transit has expanded its express bus service," says Scott Pearson, assistant manager of the Student Life Centre, whose staff sell GO tickets at the SLC turnkey desk. "On Fridays now 24 buses will leave campus towards Milton and Mississauga (Square One). The expanded service begins September 4." That's tomorrow. Full GO schedules are online.

The information systems and technology department and the office of organizational and human development "are pleased to announce," says a memo, "that the new Fall SEW 2010 workshops are now open for registration. In addition to SEW’s popular core programming for electronic workplace applications, highlights of this late summer/ early autumn brochure include a new course on Office 2010, which examines the latest version of Office applications, as well as Windows 7 Tutorial, which offers an opportunity to try Windows 7, and see how it differs from XP and Vista, and another session of the popular Facebook & Twitter, which examines privacy settings and utilization as work tools. For full course descriptions, please view the latest brochure. Registration for these workshops takes place through MyHRinfo. This system allows attendees to view available spaces in workshops, register online, view your registration history and status, and receive immediate registration notifications via email. You can register for courses through the Learning and Development module of the Self Service menu."

And . . . sweltering summer seems to be over, and rain moving in just in time for the holiday weekend, but what a summer it's been. "With an overall temperature over 2.5 degrees above average it was the hottest August since 1959," says a monthly summary issued by Frank Seglenieks of the UW weather station. "There was little relief from the heat as well, given that there were no days that were significantly (i.e. more than 5 degrees) below average. We still have not seen a month this year that has been below average, making this the warmest first 8 months of the year since 1998, which was the hottest year on record in the area. It was a dry month with only 36.2 mm of precipitation when the average for August is 87.0 mm."

CAR

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