No college can make every one of its students happy, but 87 percent of survey respondents felt that Whitman tries to come as close as possible.

According to Simi Singh, who responded to the “Freshman Year” survey, the negative parts of the first year are important aspects of the college experience.

“Going to college is supposed to be a difficult and experiential transition and a lot of the valuable experiences you gain from freshman year should come from the difficulties that you encounter socially, academically, or extra-curricularly,” Singh wrote. “The bumps in the road make for exciting and worthy learning opportunities.”

These “bumps in the road” consisted of discomfort during orientation, difficulties finding the right classes and different opinions on what dorm living should be like.

When surveyed about what specifically, if anything, they would change about orientation, 10 out of the 53 respondents listed “Playfair” as something that should be taken out, or at least changed to a different date. Playfair was a mixer on Ankeny that involved getting-to-know you games and was a required event for incoming first years.

“Playfair should be a week or two later once people have started classes and gotten a bit settled in,” wrote Katie Lei. “The way it was done this year, it was just an overload of faces and names that didn’t seem very effective.”

Stephanie Herbst wrote that it was “weird being treated like a 12-year-old on one of the first days of college.”

The “Can I kiss you?” lecture about consent in intimate situations was commented on by various students. Many either disagreed with the way the speaker delivered his message in “Can I kiss you?” or felt that it was redundant when there had been other discussions about consent already.

In regard to the presentation about alcohol consumption that took place during the first week, Timothy Wilder felt that it was “fundamentally flawed” because it lacked important facts.

“We are told that drinking is a choice that some will make: but that we should be wary of: and are then presented with anecdotes and statistics regarding alcohol’s use. But never are the actual effects of heavy binge drinking illustrated or explained, and it would seem that these talks have very little positive effect on the student body, if any,” Wilder wrote.

Some of the respondents who started school in January felt that they missed out on important orientation events. Aurora Bowers said she wished Jan-starts had a scramble, and Oliver Wood said he felt like he was just “thrown in” with the rest of the first-years.

Class selection was also cause for discomfort for many first years, as they get to choose classes only after the upperclassmen have. Many respondents felt dissatisfied with the fact that they could not get into many classes that interested them.

Nathan Ord wrote “I wasn’t entrirely happy about my classes because for the most part, I felt that they were simply things that I needed to do, and didn’t want to do. This was primarily due to the closure of all the classes I wanted to take.”

Dorm life, however, was something that got few complaints.

“All the ResLife staff were super approachable and made sure that we felt we could come to them for advice or support. Requiring freshman to live together in small dorms in even smaller sections ensures that everybody makes friends,” wrote Hayley Hemphill.

Some suggestions for how to make dorm living more comfortable were to arrange more section-to-section bonding as well as mixers with people of the opposite gender, and to lower the temperature in the dorms.

In general, though, the survey responses were all specific suggestions on small changes that could be made, not condemnations of Whitman in general. Most students commented that they feel well taken care of.

Peter Olson summed it up when he wrote: “I’ve talked to friends at other colleges, and no one has it as cushy as we do.”