LA GRANDE — The hustle and bustle of campus life returned to Eastern Oregon University with the start of classes on Monday, Sept. 25 — but before diving into academics the university spent a full week welcoming new students to campus and helping ease everyone into college living.

Around 100 new students arrived on campus for move-in day on Sept. 20 and continued to trickle in throughout the week, according to Eastern’s Residence Life Housing Director Jeremy Jones. There also were about 150 new students who moved in early to participate in the summer bridge program or for sports including football and soccer.

“It worked out great,” Jones said. “We’ve got some good students coming in. It’s going to be a great year.”

Despite the rainy weather during the morning of move-in day things worked smoothly, Jones said. The flow of move-in day was designed to be as stress-free as possible for arriving students and their families.

“Everything moves pretty efficiently,” Jones said. “Our students were great. They were really ready to take the day on. Everybody had a good attitude and had some fun with it.”

Incoming students are assigned to either morning or afternoon check-in depending on if they are in room A or room B of a suite. This allows there to be fewer people moving into the same space at the same time, which makes the process feel less chaotic and overwhelming.

Jones added that the move-in process is flexible and the residence life team can accommodate families that need to arrive at other times.

Housing

Although the overall number of students utilizing on-campus housing has increased this year in comparison to last, Jones said Eastern is still working to rebuild the number of incoming first-year students post COVID-19 pandemic.

“We’re looking to be up about 8% over last year at this time overall with all of our housing. Our upperclassman housing is completely full right now, so we’re at 100% occupancy for Alikut and Eocene Courts, which is great,” Jones said. “Our freshman class is still kind of under that recovery here. We’d like to see another 40 to 50 freshmen coming in annually.”

Currently the first-year residence halls — North and Daugherty — are set up to be able to house 423 students, according to Jones. However, this number is a moving target and can change from year to year.

“It’s nice to have that flex space,” he said.

Jones explained that depending on the number of students and the needs of the student body, residence life leaders are able set up suites in different configurations. The maximum number of students those two dorms can collectively house is 450.

Trust

The director of residence life at EOU recognizes how much the pandemic has impacted and affected students in a multitude of ways.

Jones said there an overall mistrust of schools and organizations by students lingers following the events of the pandemic. Students expressed feeling pushed around by their schools, in part due to the constantly changing regulations and requirements. At times students felt like their schools did not have their best interest in mind.

“Earning trust is a lot harder, so we really acknowledge that off the bat and want to not take that for granted. We have to put the work in to earn trust,” Jones said.

The pandemic also made a big impact on mental health — both for the incoming class and returning students.

“There’s just a lot more anxiety. A lot of our work is really just doing a lot of trauma response and care around that — to build relationships and connections,” he said. “But it’s really hard for some of our students even to navigate some of what used to be a little bit basic and commonplace for folks.”

Jones added that it is really important to listen to these students — to hear their stories and believe the difficulties they are experiencing. Then staff can help brainstorm ways forward with them and figure out what they need to be successful.

A lot of this work is done by the resident assistants — also known as RAs.

These students take a class in the spring term that lays out the theoretical background and then return early to campus to go through training before the school year begins, according to Jones. Many of the training sessions are designed to address the changing needs of students.

“We’ve been here since Labor Day just doing training,” he said.

The counseling department, student affairs department and the diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging team all put on training sessions for the RAs.

WOW

Every fall, EOU organizes a Week of Welcome for new students — both those who live on campus and off campus — transitioning into college life. The week is packed with events designed to help students make friends and get more comfortable on campus, said Eastern’s Director of Student Success and Transition Kathryn Shorts.

“We intentionally do programming for Week of Welcome to try and help students meet each other, you know, make some new friends,” she said. “Students need help with the socialization.”

While the transition to college can be stressful, WOW activities are important as they encourage new students to go beyond their comfort zones in preparation for the challenges ahead. Shorts said one of the goals is helping the incoming first-year students let go of their fears and concerns in order to have some fun and be themselves.

The other major goal for the week is building community. Shorts understands the importance of students meeting other students they have something in common with and building those friendships. Building those connections helps students stay in school.

“We’re really trying to encourage them to make friends. We’re trying to encourage them use resources. And then we’re also trying to encourage them to get involved,” Shorts said.

She credits the WOW leaders with the overall success of the program. The leaders are returning students who have volunteered their time to help the incoming class transition.

Connections

Shorts said her team plans to organize more events to facilitate connections on campus on a monthly basis. Residence life also provides programming for students throughout the year, according to Jones.

“We do thousands of programs. Not hundreds, we do thousands of programs in one academic year. It’s pretty incredible how many programs we do,” he said.

This includes everything from small, passive activities to large, active events. The department also partners with faculty members to host study nights.

“If we do our job well, we can continue that fun because it doesn’t have to end at Week of Welcome,” Jones said.