Frosh week, but strictly no partying: organizers try to keep younger students in line

Universities hoping frosh week doesn't spark outbreaks Montreal universities are trying to ensure frosh week activities don’t result in major COVID-19 outbreaks like they did in the States.

Montreal — There will be no matching t-shirts, no bar crawls, no partying—at least not if the organizers can help it.

Frosh Week at Concordia is online this year, and some of the people putting it together are worried that some first-year students won’t want to accept losing out on the experience.

“That's our biggest worry right now, is that someone wants to have the frosh of previous years experience, where there's a lot of drinking involved,” said Eduardo Malorni of the Concordia Student Union.

“And at home alone, no one is available to help them if something does go wrong.”

Some schools are having a mix of in-person and virtual frosh weeks, like Bishop’s University.

While in person, though, the participants will have to wear masks.

“We're trying to find fun tricks to make it not just like ‘You have to social distance,’ but also keep your spirits high,” said Amelia Krallis, one organizer. “Because it is a positive time—people are coming to university but also [are] safe.”

They also realize there’s a risk the younger students will want to take things into their own hands and ditch the rules. They’ve been communicating with local police to help make sure that doesn’t happen.

“Having those regulated activities and events on campus that we can oversee and support will hopefully mitigate that want and need to regroup off-campus,” said Krallis.

At Concordia, students will have to wait a few months or a year to get to know each other face-to-face. The goal of frosh, for now, is “a lot more about figuring what you have available to you, as opposed to meeting people,” said Malorni.