Spend the Night!

Hi Littell, this is RA Mook from 3rd Est! I wanted to let you all know about the Spend the Night Program and what it's all about. (See me for the form and additional questions or concerns as soon as you can).

Spend the Night is a program that SUCO does for prospective students, most likely seniors in high school, who have been accepted to the college but may have not quite decided this is where they want to go. Spend the Night is an opportunity for an accepted student to come for one night and stay with a current student here. They will ask questions, get to know the school a little bit, get to know what it's like to live in a residence hall. The program is basically to be a fun, hands-on way to convince them to come to college here, so your outlook on Oneonta must be positive during the course of their visit. Remember, your job is to make them feel comfortable here and want to come here. One of the biggest rules is that you CANNOT take your student off campus and actually the both of you sign a waiver saying you won't. YOU'RE responsible for the student until you get he/she back to their parents.

There is a training session you must attend, (probably a half hour long) which you sign up for on the form you get from me to do the program. Pick a training session you know you can attend because you MUST go if you're serious about Spend the Night.

I personally have done Spend the Night twice and had a great time each time. Here's what happens: You pick up your boy/girl that was assigned to you the night of the Spend the Night, you take him/her back to your residence hall. Talk to him/her, answer questions, make him/her feel comfortable, get to know each other, introduce him/her to some of your friends, watch a movie, get food go to sleep. (Or whatever you choose to do, guitar hero, whatever, as long as he/she is having a good time). The next morning: go to breakfast with him or her so he/she can see what the dining hall is like, then you escort him/her to a class that he/she was assigned to sit in on. It may be your own if you have an early class; if not you can choose to sit in on it or not, but you have to pick up your student after the class then escort him/her back to where the parents are (either Morris or Hunt, they'll tell you).

It's REALLY easy and REALLY fun, and did I mention you get volunteer hours for doing Spend the Night??!! Yes!!! You get volunteer hours for this! (You NEED a certain amount of volunteer hours to GRADUATE actually, if you didn't know) so Spend the Night is one of the most popular ways to stack up the volunteer hours because it's been known to be the most fun way to do it.

This semester the FYE halls are having a competition to see which hall can host the MOST spend the nights, so I'm trying really hard to inform Littell so we win!!! I already have a lot of people signed up. Make sure it's okay with your roommate before filling out the form, host as many as you can handle (they sleep on your floor and know to come with a sleeping bag so you don't have to provide them with a pillow or anything). It's so fun AND you can put this on a resume.

Please find me for a form, fill it out and get it back to me - I'll turn it in for you.

Thanks Littell!!! Hope to see many of you soon!
*~RA Mook~*