FroshWeek 2011 - Post Mortem

After a hectic past couple of weeks, the Computing Science Student Society's annual FroshWeek is finally all but done with. After many weeks of planning, thousands of dollars, plenty of meetings, and too many person hours to count we are now in the wrap-up stages of the project.

Planning for this huge event started as early as this past June. After landing on a new theme for this year (memes) and recruiting both Froshleaders and sponsorships we were off to a good start. Not only did we start the planning process earlier than usual, we were convinced that the event would prove to be better than previous years.

This did however seem to be a pipe dream in retrospect.

The week kicked off with a rough start. Problems such as an improperly designed Froshguide, a missing barbecue, a leaky regulator hose, and a exceedingly difficult Amazing Race clue resulted in a damaged FroshWeek spirit. Turnout was also lower than previous years as well, even though we increased the overall marketing and recruitment levels for this years event over the past. This did however seem to be the circumstances for this year, after talking to the Engineering FroshWeek planners, we found out that they were in a similar situation.

The second day of the week didn't prove any better than the first. A rescheduled luncheon for WICS meant that no one was able to make the scheduled time slot, and turnout for this event was miniscule. We were now beginning to worry that the failures from the first day had scared all the first years away. Finally things began to look up as a solid group of new first years formed around the Survival Training event. We were than re-motivated to continue on with our FroshWeek plans.

After a successful evening of Survival Training, the fourth days events were comprised of PacMacro at Harbour Centre followed by a large group dinner. Again these events were a great deal of fun and almost everybody was able to make it downtown to attend. The only hitch was that T-Shirts still had not been printed, so we were forced to change suppliers with a last minute printing request. We now had twenty four hours for the shirts to be printed before we needed to hand them out.

The final day is also the longest day of FroshWeek at SFU. Starting mid-afternoon we were able to form teams to begin the Photo Hunt. Although we were delayed slightly, it allowed for a group of late students to meet up with the rest of the group. At this point we still did not have any T-Shirts for the final day. It was up until the very last minute until finally the Froshleaders were able to get a shirt. The teams headed downtown to take their photos and finally pick up their shirts

Getting back to campus, we followed with the traditional dodge-ball and Slurpee boat race against the Engineers. These events were as fun as always, as well as being much more civilized due to proper refereeing. Afterwards we proceeded to enjoy the late night pizza dinner, followed by many long card games until the early morning. It was a very long and exhausting day, but I'm glad we were able to throw another FroshWeek for the new first year students.

In the end everybody had plenty of fun, and we ended up maintaining schedule, for the most part, and remaining under the projected budget. Looking forward to next year we are hoping not to make the same mistakes again, resulting in a smoother and more successful FroshWeek 2012... which will be pirate themed.