​Applause for Project Arts

Even as all freshmen spend Orientation Week getting to know East and West Campus together, some arrive already acquainted with a circle of classmates and with some of the culture of Duke thanks to our pre-orientation programs. This year the five programs of Project WILD, Waves, BUILD, Change and Search were joined by Project Arts, a new program that engages incoming first-years with Durham’s art community and themes of social justice. The program divides students into the media of visual arts, dance, music and theater, but all students explored this year’s theme of classism together in their art projects. Joining Project Change as a pre-orientation program with a focus on social activism, Project Arts gives us a chance to ask to what end pre-orientation programs are meant to serve incoming first-years.

In the past, we have recommended pre-orientation programs as a valuable opportunity for first-year students to find friendship, achieve a sense of community and gain experiences that can inform them about some of their interests at Duke. We continue to believe that greater participation in these programs would benefit students and that whatever can be done to increase the number of spaces in these programs should be considered. More specifically, we appreciate that Project Arts works to introduce students to specific thematic issues. Discussion of controversial issues is important in the interests of a diverse community of thought at Duke, and pre-orientation programs provide excellent forums for discourse due to their tendency to foster small-group interactions. One concern we harbor, however, is that program staff may present the issue as more of an afterthought to the program’s concrete projects if they are not properly trained in how to fully incorporate it into the curriculum. Pacifying the need for discussion with mishandled facilitating is not the point, after all, however given the newness of Project Arts, there is time yet for change and its potential in what it has and will provide students as a pre-orientation experience is unquestioned.

Going further, Project Arts does remind us that not all programs engage in work for social change or other service work. Some disparage programs like Project WILD and Project Waves for this, but if all pre-orientation programs were focused on completing intense projects, some of the community-building might be lost. This is because incoming first-years often worry about first-semester programs like FOCUS and pre-orientation programs, feeling that not applying or being accepted somehow leaves them behind their peers. These other programs choose to focus on fun and making the students feel comfortable with one another and with Duke through the upperclassmen who staff the programs. That said, because those programs focus so much on forming close friendships in their small groups, we urge those first-years to pay attention to who they are with during Orientation Week and to branch out.

With the addition of Project Arts, the range of pre-orientation programs Duke offers, we believe, is more what incoming first-years need than a slate of academically or intellectually driven programs. Concerns still remain for some other programs about dirty rushing by the upperclassmen who staff them, and some investigation ought to be done by their planning committees and administration to determine if staffers are ever contributing to social stratification at Duke in any way. But even still, with proper training and screening for the staff applications, we maintain pre-orientation programs are good for our incoming classes.