Campus Bustling As University Hosts Open House

By Phil Schoch – Staff Writer

The University recently hosted an open house for interested students. 

Not only does it give visitors and potentially new students a tour of the campus and its facilities, but it also brings new life to the University’s campus, which had just finished midterms week.  

This burst of activity wakes up the University’s campus that is not as active during normal Sunday mornings. 

For open houses, several students see bustling activity in the DeNaples Center. They see purple polo shirt dressed students, stepping up on a giant purple podium right next to the TV tower, holding microphones to amplify their voices, talking to several families and prospective students about what life is like at the University.  

Outside, they see several white tents at the flagpole and alongside the Royal Way, leading students from the DeNaples Center to the Long Center. 

In the Byron Recreation Complex, dozens of tables and signs are set up by student volunteers, boasting all the academic programs, clubs, sports teams, and other activities that the University holds. 

And in the middle of all this bustle, all this business, are these purple polo-shirt wearing students, volunteering several hours out of the day to make an event like the open house possible. A specific group of people in this purple army are the open house tour guides. 

These open house tour guides do all this voluntarily and have different reasons for doing this.  

But what exactly do tour guides do during open house? 

Senior Tess Sinclair, one of the tour guides, explains her job as a volunteer worker for open house.  

“Tour guides during open house do different things than full campus tours.” Sinclair said. 

Even though tour guides in an open house have different roles than normal campus visits, they still have important jobs taking each group of interested students to major locations on the University’s campus. 

“So, during open house I took families to each of the five stops in LSC, the library, DeNaples, (the) Fitness Center and GLM, and then I walked them around as they listened to the podium speakers in each of those locations.” Sinclair said. 

In many ways, tour guides are the model representatives of the University to campus visitors. They are the first impressions of the University and its student body. This became Sinclair’s motivator to becoming a tour guide. 

“I wanted to be a tour guide to spread how much I enjoy university life with others,” Sinclair said. 

Because she had very many experiences from her years at the University, Sinclair had quite a lot of stories to share with her tour group. 

Similarly, one of Sinclair’s deciding factors was how the university presented itself and its community to her. 

“When I came to open house, I really enjoyed how all of the clubs, organizations and all of the programs were easily accessible to students, and everyone was willing to answer any questions that I had,” Sinclair said. 

“As we walked around, any questions they had, I gave them answers about either my life and in my experience at the university, or any questions they had specific to their program they were interested in,” Sinclair said.