On August 25, over 800 first-year students at Point Loma Nazarene University were greeted by upperclassmen dancing, cheering and singing, “Welcome welcome welcome to PLNU!” It was the first day of Welcome Week, a five-day orientation led by PLNU’s Associated Student Body (ASB), student leaders, faculty and staff.
After students moved into their dorms, they were quickly immersed into life at Loma. From Alpha (freshmen small groups) to a SeaWorld trip and a carnival, PLNU provided opportunities for freshmen and transfer students to connect with their peers. This is something that’s already proven valuable to Daniela Macmillan, a first-year graphic design major.
“I really liked the Alpha stuff, because especially as girls, everybody [can get] really cliquey really fast,” Macmillan said. “I feel like Alpha brings us all together.”
For Brooklyn Chase, a first-year elementary education major, one of her favorite moments during Welcome Week happened right inside her dorm. She said that a highlight from the week was connecting with the people in her hall, hoping to make “lasting friendships” with the people she’s met so far.
This year, ASB President Leah Boles experienced Welcome Week a little differently than when she was a freshman. Now in her final year at PLNU, Boles had the opportunity to pray for students and their families during Welcome Week’s annual covenant service — a time where students get to say goodbye to their families before beginning their college journey.
“I got up there and I took a deep breath, and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, three years ago I was saying goodbye to my parents,’” Boles said. “Remembering those emotions and then seeing those emotions on the faces of the people in the crowd and being able to pray over them and empathizing with what they were feeling was such a cool and beautiful moment. Just so full circle for me.”
Connor Mathisen, PLNU’s director of new student engagement, said that his highlight from the week was also the covenant service — a tradition that he remembers from his time as a student over 15 years ago.
“It’s one of the first places we ground students in why we call ourselves a Nazarene institution,” Mathisen said. “We get to go through a really inherently Nazarene liturgy as part of it, and it’s a covenant to our Christian heritage and to join together as a community. … It’s been an amazing tradition and something that sets apart our orientation.”
Another distinct tradition that students get to participate in is the sand ceremony, where students are given a vial of sand and empty it into a large tank together, full of sand from previous first-year students. It’s an event that Kathy Lee, PLNU’s director of student experience, said helps students “reflect on the bigger picture of things.”
“The sand ceremony this year was a really beautiful reminder of that — that we are not only coming together to start this new journey for our new students here at PLNU but that they’re being folded into a much larger picture of who we are as a university,” Lee said in an email interview. “They are coming in and entering into the fold of all the alumni, staff, faculty, and returning students that are a part of our university, adding to the community that we have here.”
The week continued with more events, ending with a concert featuring Telephone Friends and Almost Monday — both Welcome Week returners. The concert welcomes both returning students and freshmen, and has become a newer tradition for the PLNU community.
“The concert is always a fun [event],” Mathisen said. “I think that’s a pretty unique event [and] we have a unique location on campus to be able to do something in an amphitheater like that.”
Although several students said they enjoyed these traditions and the jam-packed orientation week, some felt there could be room for improvement.
“I don’t want to be super nitpicky because they have it planned out for a reason, but it’s a lot of frontloading, and then the last two days, there was almost nothing going on,” Dawson Horne, a first-year nursing major, said. “I thought that could have been spread out to make it a little easier.”
Chase agreed, saying she felt they needed a little more free time.
“We were like ‘go-go-go’ the whole week and it was kind of draining, and we went straight from Welcome Week into school,” Chase said. “Otherwise, it was really fun.”
Kailyn Collette 
Emily Jones