Alyssa Wend ’24
Copy Editor
On April 15, Sophomore Class President Loren Mello ’24 set up free stickers at a table outside of Denison for the class of 2024 to celebrate declaring their majors. Major declaration forms were due on April 11, and in the beginning of April sophomores could be seen going to the registrar’s office to submit their forms.
While declaring a major is an important marker in one’s college career, COVID-19 restrictions due to a rise in cases across the 5Cs prevented a larger gathering of the entire Scripps class of 2024. At Mello’s small event, students stopped by to pick up their stickers and congratulate one another. However, not many people were able to participate as many Scripps students were in isolation or quarantining.
For those who were able to participate, the event was still a chance for students to engage with each other as larger events have been canceled for the rest of the semester. “I always love hosting these events cause it’s just nice when people stop by and you get to talk to them,” said Mello. “So I always end up somehow meeting new people… and then it’s always nice to check in with people who I know but I don’t share any classes with them because we’re not in the same major.”
Mello held her event to give students a chance to stop by, get stickers to celebrate the occasion, and recognize how far the class of 2024 has come. Although students were not able to come together as an entire class at a larger event, Mello’s event allowed students to reflect on the actual process of declaring their majors individually.
The class of 2024 had an unusual end to their high school experiences and spent their first year of college online, so major declaration felt surreal to some students. “I didn’t really get a graduation from high school, so it’s kind of hard to process that I’m actually in college,” said Mello. “In many ways I feel like I never left high school, and declaring my major I’m like, ‘oh, so this is real, like I’m really in it… I’m halfway done with my college education.’”
Mello was one of the students excitedly running to the registrar to declare her major. “I went straight from getting my second advisor’s signature down at Mason… ran to the registrar’s office,” she said. “It was a month-long process getting that worked out… We defeated the institution and declared the major.”
On the other hand, the process felt unspecial to some students as they rushed to get their forms in. “I felt like it was an assignment,” said Adeline Rogers ’24. “It was just something on my to-do list.”
While a larger event to celebrate major declarations was unable to happen this semester, students appear to be looking forward to future events instead of lamenting the ones they missed. “With COVID it’s hard,” said 2022-23 SAS 5C Events Chair Trinity Walker ’24. “It’s really easy to get stuck on the things we’ve missed out on. I see that a lot with, ‘oh, let’s redo prom’ or anything. I think that can kind of get you a rut and still focusing on that time where you couldn’t have things, and I think sometimes it’s better to move forward than try to relive the past, because I feel like it’s never going to be as great as it could have been in your imagination.”
Rogers expressed a similar sentiment. “I feel like it doesn’t need to be marketed as a redo event, because I feel like at a certain point people just move on and don’t want to have to reminisce about past losses,” she said. “But having a new event, that’s just class of 2024… that could be kind of a cool new way to celebrate instead of just marking it as something that we’re catching up on.”
Depending on COVID-19 restrictions and the amount of cases on campus, there may still be opportunities for students to come together and celebrate both the big and small moments of their college careers as the year comes to a close.
Image Source: Ellen Hu ’24
