Is 16 Old Enough For College?

I read an article just this morning about New Hampshire trying to pass state legislation to allow 16 year olds to graduate from high school (assuming the pass all the required testing to meet graduation standards). Their rationale is to allow students to work at their own pace and, if they are properly prepared, go off to start their higher education two years sooner.

I have to wonder: is 16 old enough for college?

RIT's Student Orientation Service (SOS)

From the fall of 1983 through the fall of 1987, I attended Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in Rochester, NY. It was a good college experience - I got a great education, made a lot of friends and had a lot of great memories.

One of the big foundations of my time there was my involvement with the Student Orientation Service (SOS). This was a volunteer organization - about forty to fifty students - with two faculty advisors to coordinate the program. The reason SOS is back in my head today because I got an email from one of the faculty folks - Dawn - who was sort of the motherly figure for our group (Joe, then by default, served as the fatherly role for us students).

SOS worked through out the year to plan for three orientation weekends in the summer (two for freshmen, one for transfers) and one big orientation week in the fall at the start of the year. We'd have weekly meetings with our committees, Sunday night training sessions monthly as a whole group, various social events through out the year to keep us motivated (like the huge Poster Painting Party in the spring to paint all those posters we'd need for the programs and the Cabin Party in the winter where we'd go chill for the day, play games, and dance). At the end of the year, we'd have our semi-formal Fall Banquet to celebrate the work we had done for the year.

I first got bit by the SOS "bug" when I arrived in the summer of 1983 for my own freshmen orientation. Here they were - all these students in matching t-shirts and cool buttons pinned - ready to help answer questions, show us around and make the transition to a new college life easier. I knew immediately this is what I wanted to do!

Freshmen year (SOS 84) I was on the Operations and Scheduling Committee (chaired that year by Beth Charney). We coordinated the plans for things, and made sure reservations for places on campus for programs were set.

Sophomore year (SOS 85) I decided to try out for the Executive Board and be a committee chairmen myself. I made it in the group of 10 chosen and headed the Deaf Awareness Committee (RIT has an affiliation on campus with NTID - the National Technical Institute for the Deaf - so I took a crash course in sign language). My committee was responsible for programming on the diversity of the hearing/deaf culture on campus as well as for scheduling interpreters.

Junior year (SOS 86) it was back to the general committe (I don't recall at the moment whose committee I was on that year) and for my Senior year (SOS 87) I was in the general committee for most of the year but stepped up to the plate for the Fall program to help run our committee when our chairperson went off on a co-op assignment. During these years, I was also the editor of the SOS-BS, our monthly newsletter that covered what each committee was up to during the year in preparation for the programs as well as a little bit of insider social messages between members.

Some of my favorite things included: chaperoning the dances we had for the incoming students (I loved to dance then), hanging out with the parents in the Ritzskeller (to help ease their minds about sending their kids off to college), performing in the skits we did for the parents and kids (to show them what college life was and was not like), and, of course, move-in day when we helped folks unload their cars and get their stuff from parking lots to the buildings ("we gotta move these refrigerators...we gotta move these color TV's...").

On my wall, the SOS group pictures hang proudly. Beneath them are the souvenier mugs from each year on display. In 1987, I was awarded the Most Outstanding Committee Member for Summer Programs (the plaque hangs proudly on the wall too). My photo albums from my college years have a lot of pictures from SOS events and after-hours parties (when we'd unwind after a long day of orientating folks).

Some of my closest friends from college came were in SOS - folks I still keep touch with to this day.

Meeting Rosie

Last month while discussing the View, I made reference to having actually met Rosie O'Donnell once before. So, since I've got time, here's the full story.

It was the first week of September in 1984 (23 years ago from this week in fact). I was nineteen at the time and back in college at RIT in Rochester, NY, to start my sophomore year. Of course, I hadn't been away all summer. I had come back for at least one of the long weekends during the summer to help out as part of the Student Orientation Service (SOS).

SOS was a group of volunteer students who helped make the transition to our college for incoming freshman and transfer students a little more enjoyable. During the summer, we did two weekends for freshmen (and their parents) and one weekend for transfers. As part of those weekends, we helped them with their academic scheduling, provided tours of the campus, put on skits to ease the minds of parents of first time college students, and generally were there to help answer any questions we could about their upcoming RIT experience. We stayed on the floors in the dorms with the students or parents (we really worked hard to separate them for the whole weekend as each group were looking for different answers and such) and we were encouraged to sit down with groups of them in the dining halls to again give them a welcome feel.

Of course, after long days of information overload, we wanted the kids and parents to kick back a bit in the evenings. Some of us were scheduled to socialize with the parents in the Ritskeller, the campus bar. Others were handling events like on-campus films, dances and comedy shows.

What we did for the summer weekends we also did, in part, in the Fall. This was usually during the week prior to the school year starting. Any students who didn't make a summer program could take part in the Fall ones. And we still had social events in the evening too, and that's kind of where Rosie comes into the picture.

At that time, Rosie O'Donnell was still a stand-up comedienne who was known mostly in the New York State area. This was before her big national exposure on Star Search. Our social activities committee had seen her in a Rochester club earlier that Spring and booked her as a comedy act for our Fall orientation. Since she herself was just beyond the college age, it seemed like a great fit. And she was clearly someone our budget could afford. Anyway, I can say how her act was at the time - I wasn't working the comedy show (I was on duty to work the dance that evening).

After the dance and other events ended for the evening, we had to do our usual tasks (clean up, breakdown of the dance floor, etc.). By 1:00am and a long exhausting day, it was time for the SOS crew to unwind like we always did. We headed back to the dorm buildings and down to one of the activity rooms in the basement of one of the dorms. There we proceeded with that evening's After-Hours Party. Yup, hard working volunteer college students took some time to have some snacks and drinks and chill out a bit. So, we're all just hanging out, some of us playing some drinking games, and in walk some of the committee members with someone in tow. Lo and behold, it's Rosie. They had been talking to her after the last comedy set and invited her to hang out with us. Lots of us had a chance to talk to her that evening, and she was happy to be in a number of pictures snapped that night. She seemed to fit right in, again due to the whole close age thing. And of course, she was funny. That was definitely one After-Hours party for the books.

Of course, none of us knew then how big of a celebrity she would become. Some folks stayed in touch with her after that night, and she soon let us know that she'd be on Star Search (hosted by Ed McMahon). Naturally we all watched to see how Rosie would fair. After that, her career exploded to the level of fame/infamy she is at today. But three dozen or so SOS members can say "I remember Rosie when...".