Have you ever found yourself walking around campus and inevitably running into some kind of tour? Either prospective students or just groups of people learning about Union. Maybe you’re going for a jog and see a huge group of people surrounding the Nott, or sitting in class as a group of wide-eyed prospective students stops and stares at you during your lecture. Maybe you’re walking around in a Minerva hoping to sit down for a few minutes and witness an explanation of how “the Minerva kitchens are community spaces for all” for the
5th time this week. Or maybe you’re walking around with a friend rehashing the previous crazy night full of not-so-school-appropriate things and run directly into a tour where you see that your entire conversation could be heard through the door, and then when you attempt to go the opposite direction in shame, you run into another group of people who stare at you as you’re dying of laughter, and then as you look for an escape out of the back door, you run into another tour walking up the stairs as you try to forget the previous series of unfortunate events. Well, the last one may have happened to me. Why do you think this happens? Maybe we book specific days where everyone gets to tour the school, or maybe our smaller campus makes the added amount of people seem just a little more dramatic. Maybe we aren’t used to seeing so many new faces at our small liberal arts college and don’t want to be on our best behavior. There are no definite answers, but I know that my friends and I definitely have a few funny stories about running into tours, and I’m sure others do too. The point of this story, though, is to note how convoluted Union becomes when tour season arrives. Everywhere you turn, there is a new group of prospective students being led around the school. Taking their first steps into ISEC or Olin, and looking at our impressive architecture. They usually take up most of the sidewalks and catch you at your worst moments, but that’s what makes them so important. Although it can be awkward to keep walking into new faces, these students get to see the real, unfiltered side with all its imperfections and funny stories, which may even encourage new students to enroll.
