The lights go dark. Karaoke plays on one side of the Memorial Student Center. A live band sings on the other. Howdy Week is back, welcoming over 72 thousand Aggies for the fall semester.
Running from Aug. 15 to 20, the week preceding fall classes features games, events, career services, open houses and free food for the thousands of new and returning students arriving in Bryan-College Station.
“Howdy Week is Aggieland’s official welcome to campus,” Corrie Ritter, a communications coordinator for New Student & Family Programs, said. “We really want it to be a time where students have an opportunity to get to know campus, build a little community with their classmates and kind of find their place on campus.”
Dozens of events are listed on Howdy Week’s five-day calendar, including a picnic with President Mark Welsh, an ultimate Frisbee meet and greet, an Ice Cream Carnival at Kyle Field and a session making flower crowns. That’s not to mention Class of 2028-specific activities, including the class photo on Aug. 18. It’ll be hot, Ritter said, so hydrate and stay cool.
Ultimately, the events serve as a means to introduce students to A&M, especially new students who haven’t found their place on campus yet, according to psychology freshman Avery Carden. Her first stop after moving in? Pizza in the MSC.
“I think it’s a great way to get to know people and find things you like to do around campus and get in niche groups,” Carden said. “I’m an out-of-state student, so it definitely helps me get to know people because I really don’t know anyone.”
Her roommates hadn’t moved in yet, so the Florida native walked around campus experiencing day one of the events on her own. That is, until another girl asked for help with her wristband. They talked, helped each other and Carden said before they knew it, they were going to events together.
“It’s fun,” Carden said. “I get to meet all kinds of new people.”
But it’s not just freshmen that can enjoy benefits. Public health senior Moniola Olawoye and multidisciplinary engineering technology senior Bianca Youlton met three years ago in Aggie Navigators, a Bible study group. Now they said they’re hoping to welcome some new faces to the group.
“It’s really nice to get involved in these types of activities that Howdy Week is hosting to make us feel included, to make us interact with new students here,” Youlton said. “It exposes us to a different lifestyle, a different culture here.”
They both have tribulations ahead — Olawoye is waiting to hear back from medical school, and Youlton has difficult classes and a capstone ahead of her. But for now, they said they’re excited to share their wisdom with the new generation of Aggies.
They’re not the only ones. Accounting senior Jillian Hermes has been tabling for MSC Cinema, a student organization that hosts free movie theater events on campus. Hermes said there’s no better way to get connected.
“It’s the best introduction to A&M life,” Hermes said. “A&M is a community, everybody says it — there’s hundreds of orgs on campus, and it’s just a really great way for new students to go out and see what’s offered, meet new people. And it’s a really fun time.”
From a student organization standpoint, Howdy Week — and MSC Open House by extension — gives orgs like MSC Cinema the chance to share what they can offer students, Hermes said. MSC Open House is an event where students can interact with over a thousand student organizations in the MSC on Aug. 25.
Similar student-hosted events, like the Queer Empowerment Council’s Queer Field Day, are hosted sporadically throughout the next week. The event at Simpson Drill Field this Sunday features free food, prizes and games like ring toss and cornhole.
But throughout it all, some of the toughest choices this week won’t be made by students — they’ll be made by parents leaving their children in a new land. James Yoakum, an Aggie dad, had mixed feelings about dropping off his daughter Ayla Yoakum.
“I’m leaving the most precious thing on this planet here,” Yoakum said.
He, along with Aggie mom Lesli Yoakum, are bringing their only child to major in English at A&M.
“I know she’s going to enjoy this,” Yoakum said. “We’ve done football games here; we’ve done tailgates here. She wanted the real collegiate experience. This is the closest thing to the real collegiate experience she’s going to get in the state of Texas.”
