Incoming freshmen who want to attend the international pre-orientation program next year will also be required to participate in either Outdoor or Community Action, according to an email sent yesterday to international students by Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Students Rachel Baldwin.
The pre-orientation — a four-day program for incoming international and exchange students that helps them become acquainted with the University as well as with American life and cultural norms — has generally taken place around the same time as Outdoor and Community Action trips. Starting next year, pre-orientation has been pushed five days earlier so as not to overlap with either OA or CA.
According to Baldwin's email, international students in pre-orientation must register for either OA or CA because housing will not be available for the gap between the end of pre-orientation and the start of freshman move-in, effectively requiring freshmen to arrange their own accommodation for the interim period if they choose not to go on the trips.
Baldwin did not respond to repeated requests for comment yesterday.
Though pre-orientation is not mandatory for international students, a majority of them participate. This year, 94 of 139 incoming international freshmen participated in the pre-orientation program.
OA Director Rick Curtis '79 said the new policy will likely cause an increase in the number of OA and CA participants next fall. "When you take a group of people who haven't been able to participate before, [there will be] a definite increase in number," he said, adding that predicting the exact number of additional participants would be difficult.
The expected increase in participants should not affect the amount of financial aid allocated to the program. As of this year, all OA participants who are on need-based financial aid at the University are exempt from paying OA fees. Curtis estimated that about 50 of 643 freshmen who went on OA this fall had international addresses, though that doesn't necessarily mean they are non-U.S. residents.
Administrators of CA programming did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Reaction from international students to the shift in pre-orientation policy is mixed, with some suggesting that pre-orientation would be negatively affected by the change.
"I support the idea of moving the dates up to give students the chance to do OA or CA if they want. That being said, I think making it mandatory is not a good idea," Selcuk Arkun '10, a student from Turkey who participated in pre-orientation, said in an email.
Arkun said the added luggage and costs of bringing OA gear to campus would be a deterrent to many international students and that many of them may choose to participate in CA as a result.
"I think it will give internationals the chance to meet a lot more people," Arkun said. "But, logistically, it just doesn't make sense. I also think there will be a tendency for internationals to do CA because it will just be harder to get everything together for OA."
Megan Chiao '09, president of International Student Association at Princeton (ISAP), also disapproved of the changes to pre-orientation. "Now that international pre-orientation has been moved one week earlier," she said, "this means that ISAP volunteers have to be on campus three weeks before school starts — one week for the program itself, and two weeks of which are somewhat wasted waiting for school to start."
Chiao added that "some incoming international freshmen may decide that they don't want to be on campus three weeks early and be forced to do OA or CA, and just stay at home and skip all the programs." Other members of ISAP she has spoken with have also had expressed concerns about the policy changes.
"I don't think it's fair that international students ... are forced to do OA or CA if they participate in international pre-orientation, because American students are not forced to do so," Chiao said. "Everyone should have the choice."
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