Left: Acting in a skit based on the TV series Cops , Brad Duff, left, and Lee Reinhardt inform students
about campus emergency telephones and parking services Tuesday moming.(Photo by Tanna
Kinnaman) Below: Lance Koenig puts away a wig after the Campus Life skits in the Culture Center
Tuesday. The group had just finished doing an NSE rendition of the Brady Bunch. (Photo by Matthew
Waite)
educational training, a three-week
intensive training session to get
ready and five weeks of tours, talks
and 11 hour days. It is the end of the
11th year of NSE.
Ask the leaders, and there is no
place they would rather be. They all
have different reasons, but all are
sad to see it end.
Veeth said she will cry on
Friday.
“Our groups has really bonded,”
she said. The leaders have been
through a lot together, she said,
from the pressures of training to
being able to joke in the middle of
the several skits they do throughout
the day.
Now, from living together and
sharing meals and nights out
together, the group is tight, and
Veeth said she is not ready to leave
for home.
For the new students that go
through the program, the bonding
that has gone on is apparent. Skits
that have been rehearsed over and
over have the feel of friends joking
with each other.
Some students during the day
wondered aloud if the leaders had
all grown up together or been
“released from the same mental
hospital.”
But Annie Jones, an NSE staff
member and a former NSE orienta
tion leader, said the fun fights the
long and crazy days.
“I don’t think they would be able
to make it if they didn’t have any
fun,” she said during the Tuesday
afternoon Campus Life skits.
Breakfast with the NSE orienta
tion leaders proved that theory.
From the moment the group sat
down in the Selleck Quadrangle
cafeteria, the jokes were flying
(along with some food). One leader
stole Jones’ cellular phone; another
started laughing so hard milk came
out of his nose.
His friends just laughed and
pointed. Other people in Selleck
didn’t even look — they were
accustomed to the loud group by now.
Marsha Criswell was spared
much of the abuse. It was her 21st
birthday and the group was going
out that night to celebrate.
But Criswell said she would be at
work the next morning, regardless
of the night before, like some of her
co-workers.
Lance Koenig turned 21 the day
before NSE started — and he was in
place the next morning.
“You can not skip work,” he
said. “We go '(gasp) you said the 's’
word: skip.’”
For their work, the NSE leaders
are paid $4.75 an hour and admis
sions pays for their room and board
for the five weeks NSE goes on.
The four staff members, three
undergraduates and one graduate
student, get $5.25 an hour.
But money is not the driving
factor for people to get involved in
NSE. Jones said most people get
involved because they remember
their NSE leader and it got them
interested in the program.
The job is for all type's, Jones
said, but it is work.
“This is a real-live job situation,”
she said. “You are working for the
university.
“You are in charge. You are in
charge of these 20 people and you
need to know how to advise them
and still be their friend.”
Another job, some of the leaders
said they have, is being a salesperson
and entertainer for the university.
Veeth said their purpose is to be more
of a guide than a salesman sideshow.
But when the leaders take the
new students on tours in the
afternoon, they are on stage. The
tours are informational, but humor
and anecdotes dot the litany of facts
about the campus and it’s buildings.
At the end of the day, the
incoming freshmen go home; the
leaders are left to hope they made
an impression on them and made
some useful lessons stick.
Veeth said the leaders use an
analogy: NSE gives students many
keys and they must determine which
doors to use.
That led Veeth to think differ
ently about her job.
“I don’t know,” she said. “How
about gatekeepers?”