New students at Jacket Smash playing a relay game — Photo by Felicity Bosk
342 Students Participated In Weekend of Welcome 2016
By Felicity Bosk
SUPERIOR- The first days of September brought approximately 700 new students onto the UW-Superior campus, the largest incoming class it has ever seen.
This year’s freshman class is five percent larger than last year–continuing a pattern of growth in the student body size over the past several years.
Students who signed up to attend Weekend of Welcome, or WoW, moved into the reshalls on Thursday and began their weekend of activities. In total, 342 young adults signed up for WoW. There was an information fair, a barbeque, the annual new student celebration and the parents send off. After this, the new students were independent college students.
Day two was full of activities spanning from education to athletic. Jacket Smash was able to be outdoors this year due to the perfect weather conditions, and had a much larger attendance than most past years. The previously divided teams competed in relay races such as carrying a cup of water on your head, spinning and then running, and tossing a wet sponge without losing the water (the last team with water still in their bucket won).
On Friday there was a block party in front of Crownhart Hall where First Year Experience Lead Student Scott McNorton was the DJ. Students danced, played lawn games, and got to know one another. The YellowJackets Activity Crew (YAC) hosted this year’s “Party on the Plaza” on Saturday featuring Whosah, an indie pop band from Minneapolis, a concert well over 100 people attended.
Among the students many of whom hail from either Minnesota or Wisconsin, were 225 students coming to UWS from another country. This year is the most diverse ever at UWS, with students coming to Superior from almost 50 different country’s including Canada, China, South Korea, Vietnam, Germany, Austria, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Latvia, Mongolia, Peru, Romania, and Spain.
Although many students come to college undecided on what their major will be, the most popular majors among the freshman class are biology, business, and elementary education.
