This year’s class of 2011 was the second IHS freshman class to receive the Link Crew introduction to high school. More in depth than the annual one-hour tour of IHS that graduating eighth graders receive, the Link Crew introduction provided a full day of orientation spent touring the entire school, finding lockers, meeting one another, and learning about what it’s like to be in high school.

Many teachers and upperclassmen at IHS have praised the Link Crew program, but a more important question is whether the freshmen themselves think it’s beneficial.

Dylan W. ’11 had mixed thoughts about the program. When freshmen arrived on the morning of orientation, they were ushered into the gymnasium, where art teacher Judy Cogan spoke to them. Cogan and English teacher Kelly Metzler together established the program at IHS. The students were instructed to participate in activities such as rubbing each other’s backs in long lines. “It was kind of confusing,” said Dylan W., “because there were a lot of people in the gym and it was hard to organize us into lines to rub backs, which I thought was kind of corny in the first place. We shouldn’t have bothered with that.” However, Dylan W. was more enthusiastic about some of the other activities. “I liked it when they had the balloon contest,” he said, in which a Link Leader and each of five boys or five girls had to pop a balloon by hugging each other. “It was really funny,” Dylan W. said, “because some of the pairs did it right away and some had to struggle to pop the balloon. I think that was a better ice-breaker than the back-rubbing thing.”

Douglas M. ’11 had similar opinions. “The morning group activities were too silly to really get into,” he said. Like Dylan W., Douglas M. also felt uncomfortable with the back rubbing. “I wish they’d left [the back rubbing] out, or replaced it with something less … up close and personal, like a tour. That would have woken me up better than a bad back rub,” he said.

While the freshmen were unenthusiastic about the morning activities, they seemed to appreciate the time spent in smaller groups in the afternoon. Vincent G. ’11 said that he liked the afternoon better because the activities were more informative and enjoyable. In his group, the two Link Leaders described what it had been like when they were freshmen and talked about their paths through high school so far. “That part was helpful,” Vincent G. said, “because we got to hear about someone else’s experiences and how they got through them instead of having to imagine what it would be like ourselves.”

Dylan W. also described an afternoon activity he enjoyed: “We played a game in my Link Group where there were lots of pieces of paper on the ground and we had to work as a team to guess which ones the Link Leaders had decided would be the ‘safe spaces.’ We could only step on those, and the goal was to get everyone over to the other side,” explained Dylan W.. The “safe spaces” represented different paths in life and journeys to success in high school. Dylan W. thought that this was fun and helpful because it represented the idea that students don’t always get everything right the first time, and might have to get a fresh start once in a while.

In general, the freshmen agreed that the morning was too high-energy and needed to be toned down, and that the afternoon was more fun and enjoyable. While the day received mixed reviews, Dylan W., Douglas M., and Vincent G. all agreed that the Link Leaders themselves were very helpful; all three commented on how much they thought their Link Leaders were “cool.” Douglas M. also had another idea: “We should have been given candy,” he said, “and I didn’t really like the dancing, but the afternoon was better by far than the morning, and the tour around the school was definitely helpful.”

All in all, these freshmen felt that the day was beneficial, but that the program needs to be fine-tuned to fully cater to their needs.