Over 5,000 first year students at Queen’s University are halfway through orientation week.
Almost half of them are enrolled in the Arts and Science department and they started their day Wednesday with the frosh parade beginning at Kingston’s University Avenue.
The parade wound its way through campus to City Park, one of dozens of events during orientation week.
“The big goal is just to make our new students feel welcome, to feel that Queen’s is as much their home as it is somebody who’s going into their fourth year. We really want to ease the transition from high school to university,” said Conor Gallant, one of the orientation week organizers.
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The activities have several broad themes — from social to academics and services available.
Getting that information to first-year students is the group leaders called “gaels.”
“Everyone in my group wants to major in psychology, so we’re going to talk to a psych prof and ask questions,” said gael Megan Herrewyne. “We’re going to talk about resources on campus like walk home, counselling and lots of different things to try to help them as much as we can.”
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Another aim of orientation week is to get frosh involved in the larger Kingston community by fundraising for charity.
Gallant says one of their largest events is Shinerama.
“We were tallying it up the other night and going into the week we’re looking at about $85,000 raised for Cystic Fibrosis Canada.”
Frosh will add to that total with two more Shinerama events on Saturday.
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