Ishita Jayadev ’26 and Amy Jayasuriya ’26
Editors-in-Chief
The SAS Transparency and Accountability Committee (TAC) successfully advocated for adding two student representative positions to the formerly student-less New Student Programs and Orientation (NSPO) committee in an effort to build more student input in the programming.
The committee chose Ava Colleran ’28 and Belén Yudess ’25 to serve as student representatives on the NSPO committee after an application process.
“We were thinking of getting first years because they have most recently done NSPO [and additionally] it would be helpful to have somebody who’s really experienced on campus and knows how campus runs,” Marin Plut ’25 said about the selection.
Plut helped create the TAC in fall 2024 to facilitate more communication and awareness between students and administrators after realizing how many changes were decided on campus without student input.
One of the first issues the TAC focused on was reforming NSPO due to broad student dissatisfaction. The committee felt they could generate a large body of student support to change the program, as every Scripps student participates in NSPO as a newcomer.
In the spring 2024 semester, the TAC distributed a survey gathering student feedback on NSPO and proceeded to send a list of demands for the upcoming NSPO to the former Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs, Adriana di Bartolo-Beckman, who left her position at the end of the semester.
Including two students on the following year’s NSPO committee was the only demand met. The other demands included more optional social activities during downtime that can help people interact with people outside of their NSPO group; passing out green boxes instead of disposables during the week to get used to the system of taking food out of the dining hall; more resources for homesickness and affinity communities; and looking into low cost day trips.
Rebecca Yao ’26 also set up a meeting with administration during the spring 2024 semester to discuss her frustrations with NSPO.
“Many students might point to orientation as the beginning of a bad experience at Scripps [when] it should be setting freshmen up for success,” she said.
Yao described NSPO as an isolating experience as she struggled to form bonds with other Scripps community members due to the cohort structure of the program. She explained that many people from feeder schools knew each other before NSPO started. This problem was only exacerbated by the lack of downtime built into the schedule, making it difficult to reach out to new people.
Yao tried to rectify this problem during her time as an NSPO leader her second year by incorporating separate tours into the NSPO schedule because she wanted the first-years to feel a genuine connection to their new school and its traditions. However, these tours were neither part of her training nor was she paid for any of the extra effort she put in.
While Yao is optimistic about how NSPO can change in the coming years, she is hesitant about the administration’s reaction to changing NSPO’s structure.
“Change does not happen very fast at any institution,” Yao said. “I think the institutions are so slow at responding to feedback and responding to changes being made because it’s just not the norm.”
Plut pointed to this unwillingness to change NSPO as stemming from a larger history of the sidelining of student-led programs at Scripps.
“A lot of [my inspiration] came from talking with Francesca Simmons [SC’14 and current Equity and Justice fellow],” Plut said. “She was talking about her experience co-leading NSPO [and it] was shocking to hear about what it used to be like. They used to give students so much more responsibility and [have] trust in students that they just don’t anymore.”
Simmons provided a written statement to TSV talking about her time as New Student Program (NSP) coordinator.
“I co-headed a team of 30 Peer Mentors and nine Team Leaders,” Simmons said. “We planned over 20 social events for the 260 members of the class of 2016 during the academic year, including trips to Disneyland and Pantages Theater; a welcome carnival during orientation for the entire 5C community; and collegiate-life-focused workshops to help in navigating the social and academic aspects of matriculation.”
The former year-long program was led by two co-coordinators, nine team leaders — eight as representatives for each residence hall and one for transfer students, with an additional 30 peer mentors across campus.
“While I was at Scripps, the program was focused on helping first-years socially connect to the wider Scripps community through peer mentors – it was for students by students,” Simmons explained.
Plut contrasted this with how many programs at Scripps are currently run.
“All of the ways for students to participate now are on a committee, as part of SAS, or in a club,” she said. “You can be a public events intern, but you’re not gonna be planning speakers to bring on campus.”
Plut pointed to loss of institutional memory from administrative staff turnover as a possible reason current administrators may be more reluctant to incorporate changes to the NSPO program.
“I think most of the Dean of Students, Student Affairs, and Student Engagement [including Reslife] staff had complete turnover during COVID,” Plut said. “Their only experience with the campus was that they got hired to keep everybody safe when everybody was coming back to campus without having any history of what Scripps used to be like. And so I think they have a really hard time envisioning students taking a different role or NSPO looking different.”
While Plut acknowledged that going back to the former functions of NSPO was probably impossible because of increased concern on optics and liability, she emphasized that having students in places where decisions were getting made could slowly shift these administrative institutions moving forward.
Simmons offered advice to current students invested in reforming NSPO.
“Current students have to be willing to put in the same amount of work we were willing to do during my time if they want the same results,” she said. “I encourage the student representatives on the committee to identify what additional responsibilities students can take on in the execution of the program, and work with the administrators to develop a plan on how to get their fellow students involved.”
Yao suggested a few short-term changes to improve NSPO, like a trip to the Village where each student could buy a snack or drink from one of the shops.
“I feel like that’s doable and forces people to actually foster more community and bond with [other] students because you’re going off campus,” Yao said.
She reflected on the committee’s potential and the importance of highlighting student voices while restructuring NSPO.
“I think there are much better ways to actually foster community within Scripps and within the 5Cs,” she said. “A lot of it starts with actually getting more input from students or having someone work on this who isn’t an administrative person. Let’s actually make change because so much of this is all talk and there are so many doable things that we could implement for the next year.”
