by The Cowl Editor on March 7, 2019
Campus
In recent years, Providence College has combined Alumni Weekend and Family Weekend into a single weekend filled with several different events and activities for the visiting alumni and parents.
Although this seems like an efficient and fun way to couple the two events, it comes with a plethora of issues which has led the school to separate them once again.
This positive change will benefit alumni, families, and students by creating more focused and less overwhelming weekends for all to look forward to.
Starting next semester, the College will host a Homecoming Weekend sometime in the fall for alumni to return to campus and attend several fun and enlightening events about what is happening on campus. They will also have a chance to interact with fellow alumni. This is important in order to focus on strengthening and improving alumni relations for PC, which will benefit recent graduates, as well as the entire student body.
The College, as always, will host Family Weekend in the spring specifically for students to see their families and enjoy several exciting events such as basketball and hockey games, campus tours, student performances, and more.
By separating these two weekends, the school not only offers more events for students to enjoy but also allows PC and coordinators of events to focus their attention further on the guests that will be attending.
In past years, the combined weekend has caused congestion on campus with various events and programs that can be overwhelming for both the attendees and organizers of these events. Not only that, but the city of Providence also becomes packed with so many people that finding restaurant and hotel reservations becomes a difficult task for visitors. Sports games easily sell out and even popular meet up places like McPhail’s or The Abbey on Admiral Street reach full capacity, causing frustration for many people.
The combined weekend also has caused conflict for parents who are alumni themselves as they try to balance spending time with their fellow classmates and also with their sons and daughters who are students.
Along with that, alumni who do not have children studying at PC may not want to attend the weekend so that they do not intrude on family get-togethers.
Legacy student Sarah Kerrigan ’20 said, “Being an alumnus and a PC parent, my dad often finds Alumni Family Weekend to be pretty overwhelming and often struggles balancing seeing his classmates who he hasn’t seen in years and also spending time with my family and me. I think he’ll be thrilled to hear that they are separating the weekends. He could use any excuse to come visit campus.”
With this new change, PC is facilitating easier and more focused weekends that will benefit attendees as well as students by bringing excitement to campus and more events to look forward to.
This will also benefit campus organizations, such as Student Alumni Association, Board of Programmers, Friars Club, Board of Multicultural Student Affairs, and more, who attempt in every way possible to get alumni and parents involved in their clubs.
Now that the weekends will be separated, it gives clubs and organizations on campus more time slots and chances to voice their purpose and provide fun and interactive events for attendees.
Overall, this beneficial change allows these two very important events to be more focused and specified to their respective attendees, which is just another way to make PC an exciting and lively place to be all year round.