Shared NSOP Experiences

Best friends Becky Cole and Dina Epstein, BC '01 and CC '01, once made a chart detailing their parallel lives. Both seniors, vice presidents of their respective student governments, and campus tour guides, it came as no surprise when the two women were able to add another detail to their chart: Orientation Committee Coordinators.

Sure to become familiar faces on move-in day and during Orientation week, Dina and Becky are perfect role models for lonely first-years. Their successful friendship began during that frantic, frustrated first week in New York City three years ago. That first week also sparked the new friends' interests in staffing Orientation.

"Orientation is still one of the highlights of my college career," Dina says, adding that in general she has had a great last three years. Since that first year, Dina and Becky have moved up through the ranks of Orientation, from Orientation Leaders to Crew Chiefs to Coordinators.

The women can't stop raving about their summer job, which officially started May 31. Working 20 hours a day since the beginning of June can't be that bad, Dina says, when you're working with your best friend.

But Dina and Becky didn't take Orientation to have more time together. "We're really invested in the schools," Becky says, as their reason for taking the jobs.

As Orientation Leaders two years ago, Becky and Dina weren't convinced that they could ever be the two coordinators for one simple reason: they are both women. Until this summer, they had only seen or worked with a male and female pair of coordinators. If that pattern continued, though, the gender make-up of Columbia University's colleges would keep Dina, and all Columbia College and SEAS women, out of the running. So she decided to run.

Coordinators certainly spend enough time together to really get to know each other, and more than one partnership has ended up in a more long-term one: marriage. Dina jokes that she and Becky should get married since they work together so well. "We thought that this summer would make or break our friendship," Dina says. "Well, we survived."

Always busy, the two friends sometimes felt that they never saw each other this summer. They would steal time for mid-day "meetings" and hide in small offices. Sure, sure, they were still working on Orientation, but they could also take five minutes to catch up on each other's lives, Dina says.

With 303 orientation staff members and more than 2000 new students and their parents to organize, Dina and Becky had little free time for each other. Revamping old orientation activities like the Community Forum took up most of their time.

Traditionally an evening of essay reading and discussions of diversity, Orientation Committee members were displeased with the program's limitations in the past. Rather than simply having Committee members read five college admission essays from the incoming class, they worked together to create a dramatic script based on more than 20 essays, emphasizing a diversity of thought.

"It's not just one-dimensional," Dina says, explaining that the performers are not matched to characters based on race, gender, school, or other characteristics, but that an Asian male may be playing a black Barnard student.

The sex education program, this year dubbed "Sex in the City," has also been rethought, so that it can reach everyone and anyone, Dina says. "It's not just about people who've been raped."

"Although that is important, and we are including that," Becky is quick to add. More basic issues, like simply to have sex or not, are discussed this year. Of the audience member who may long ago have decided not to have sex before marriage, Becky says, "We don't want that person to be isolated."

Changes to the program were not easy for Becky and Dina to make, as they ran into some walls within the Administration, which had witnessed the success of past orientation weeks, and hesitated to make some major changes, like the ones in the Columbia College convocation. (We'll save that surprise for later.)

"We feel like we have to prove ourselves," Dina says, "because it took a lot to convince the Administration to change the traditional stuff."

On a positive note, Dina adds that she and Becky have become close to administrators they never knew existed. Barnard College Dean Dorothy Denburg invited the Orientation Committee to her home for dinner over the summer, and Becky and Dina even claim to have pictures of themselves riding a scooter down College Walk with Director of Alumni Programming Roger Lehecka.

Administrators still have trouble telling the two friends apart and always end up calling Dina "Becky," and vice versa. "Come on, I'm the one with the dyed-blond hair," Dina jokes. Hair on its way to be cut, she says, as she and her friend leave to make hair appointments and pick out their outfits for convocation.

Working together hasn't only highlighted what these friends have in common, but also differences they never recognized. "We think differently, we prioritize things differently, we have very different leadership skills," Becky says.

But they complement each other, Dina says, and things have gone pretty smoothly. With a little luck, and Tuesday's 75 degree weather forecast, Becky adds, things should go smoothly all week.