75 Students Inducted Into HTC

22 September 2011
By Jessie Cadle

The Honors Tutorial College initiated 75 freshmen and transfer students this year at the seventh annual ceremony held at Galbreath Memorial Chapel. The HTC Freshman Induction Ceremony was held Monday, September 5.

Not a cell phone sounded during the stoic ceremony, and waxy white candles illuminated the evening’s events while rain pounded outside. The ceremony officially began with a speech by Dean Webster donned in his academic regalia.

Though the event was solemn, it was peppered with laughter as each speaker passed on advice to the incoming HTC class. Dean Webster spoke first about the expectations of the college, from studying habits to contributing to the community. Six student speakers followed: two seniors, two juniors and two sophomores.

Then the students were called up to the front of the chapel to sign their names and receive a Common Place book, a blank journal to gather their thoughts from first-year reflections to academic struggles. The annual event serves to officially initiate students into the college and the community that is the HTC.

“It’s welcoming you into a family within the University,” said Alex Menrisky, a senior studying journalism, who has spoken at the event for three years.

This year, he urged students to accept the inevitable change of college, but to make sure that they maintain a sense of self and do not change to please others, he said.

“The goal I believe is to impart something on the freshmen that they haven’t heard before,” he said. He added that there is an extra pressure to impart unique wisdom now that upperclassmen attend the preceding.

For Helen Cothrel, a freshman studying astrophysics, the upperclassmen involvement helped make the evening.

“It felt more like we were being worked into the texture of the college with all of its members,” Cothrel said. “It makes it seem more like a family reunion, in the sense that when something really big happens everyone gathers, and you meet everyone, but you have no idea who they all are.”

At the end of the event, the new initiates left the chapel with their Common Place books in hand, and were greeted with cheers by the upperclassmen ready to welcome the new class.