It's important being a pre-frosh host

During April of my senior year of high school, I packed up my duffel bag and hopped into my mom's SUV, ready to begin the mammoth journey from northern New Jersey to Princeton's pre-frosh weekend. One hour and 400 traffic lights later — let it be known that Route 206 has more traffic lights than any other highway in the nation — I arrived on campus. I had already stayed overnight at a couple other schools and had been impressed. But I was far more anxious about visiting Princeton. I knew Princeton had great academics, so I was not worried about that. I was more concerned about the social stereotypes I had heard about.

In high school, I had always heard Princeton, aka Snobville, was the quintessential place for elitism. Apparently, half the class was made up of politicians' children, a quarter were legacies and the other quarter wore plaid shorts and played croquet. One friend had told me, "Everyone wears a blazer and tie to parties. You should pack some formalwear for your visit." Um, are you kidding me?

Powell Fraser's column last year described his overnight visit as a pre-frosh as beer-filled and ending in a tremendous hangover. My visit, however, was not an introduction to Beast. In fact, for the first hour, my host and two other fellow pre-frosh played Boggle in my host's room in Buyers Hall. Yes, Boggle. After rolling our eyes at each other and intentionally yawning as obnoxiously as we possibly could, one of us blurted out, "Dude, can we do something else? This sucks!"

Fortunately, the evening turned out to be more exciting. After going to a welcome dinner, meeting current students and other pre-frosh, we were informed that Third Eye Blind was playing at Dillon Gym that night and that we could all go. Sick! All the previously semi-charming pre-frosh and I burst into a fit of ecstasy and started jumping around the South Lawn of Frist high-fiving each other.

During the weekend, we met fellow prospective students, hung out at alcohol-free events at certain eating clubs and checked out a variety of student performing groups at Tiger Night. I joined two of these groups as a freshman and remain an active member in both groups. Some of my friends have told me stories about getting hammered at room parties, but I was happy to have gotten a chance to explore the campus, talk to people and dispel many of the myths I had heard about Princeton.

For me, pre-frosh weekend was a broad and accurate introduction to Princeton ... except for my experience with housing. I, along with the two pre-frosh whom I had stayed with in Rocky all decided to come to Princeton ... and all of us wound up in the palace known as The But. After a weekend of being exposed to glorious gothic architecture, we were supposed to live in that hunk of junk? Blasphemy!

Hosting a pre-frosh is harder than many might initially think. It's tempting to want to show your pre-frosh everything that you do and talk to them about everything that you love about Princeton while being aware of the fact that your pre-frosh might have entirely different interests. For example, most pre-frosh are not going to want to hear my 30-minute about why fro-yo is the best part of Princeton's dining system.

I think pre-frosh weekend is something that some hosts blow off while other hosts try too hard. My roommates and I are hosting two pre-frosh this weekend, and we hope to show them a good time. Even so, I want my pre-frosh to leave with a complete view of opportunities at Princeton. I'm not going to try to "sell" Princeton to them, but I definitely hope that they get to see and to experience enough so that they can make an informed decision. And I definitely will not have them play Boggle. Neel Gehani is an ORFE major from Summit, N.J. He can be reached at ngehani@princeton.edu.