Last year I walked onto Guilford’s campus with bright eyes and a perky attitude. I followed my tour guide through every building, gawking with the other students in my group, amazed at everything we saw. When I would look at the students, they all seemed unhappy and angry, which I didn’t think was a very good indication if I wanted to attend Guilford.

Now, as my first year comes to an end, I have learned why these students looked so angry; it was the weekend of Spring into Guilford and there were hundreds of high school kids bumbling around campus and getting in the way.

The tour guides were excited and chipper, which made the relatively boring events seem fun and interesting; I even thought I would want to be a tour guide at some point. Little did I know that I would become one of the jaded students that loathes these events.

The last few years this event has been a one-day treat for prospective students and their families to have a chance to see the campus in all its glory. This year the administration has decided to do a smaller event, which sounds pretty fantastic right?

“We decided to do three events to give more students the chance to visit,” Assistant Director of Spring into Guilford Elizabeth Hoffman said.

It’s going to be three weekends now, so instead of hundreds of students all in one day, it will be one hundred students, the same painful process and an entire weekend for each group as opposed to the one-day extravaganza it once was.

“We hope that current students are excited about the opportunity to share their experiences and love for Guilford with prospective families and we are giving them multiple opportunities to do so,” Hoffman said.

These prospective students are invited to attend our sporting events, art fairs, anything to acclimate them to the campus, which is cool for them and our teams if it brings them more fans, but it just doesn’t seem fair for some reason.

We get three chances to show these kids what college is like. The most ironic part about this whole event is that these students don’t really get to see what college life is really like. We can’t take them to a party, and it would probably be frowned upon to let them experience a college paper by letting them write one of ours.

Walking around campus when there are small tour groups is rough, and I apologize to any student that had to deal with the 700 people milling around campus last year. Our intention was not to be annoying and this year will be the same.

“Offering more students a chance to visit campus is important given the state of admissions and the economy,” said Hoffman. “Creating three afternoon programs has helped us save an enormous amount of money, specifically in catering and rental costs.”

The event schedule is basically the same as it has been in years past: listen to a panel talk about how great Guilford is; listen to a tour guide talk about how great Guilford is while walking around the campus; go to a room and listen to professors talk about the great academic programs that aren’t experienced until sophomore or junior year.

Students get the chance to sign up for the amazing classes that are actually general education classes for first-years.

However, my favorite part, lunch, isn’t even offered anymore.

The switch to three events will create a smaller event, obviously, and it will also allow for more students to visit, which will be good for the school. But as a student, it is hard to consider these logistics when faced with the idea of so many people on our turf.

This is a small campus, which is what I liked as I walked around last spring, but when you put another hundred students in, it gets a little cramped.

Also, with so many families visiting there are going to be other ramifications for students besides the inconvenience.

“I guess this means that we will have to behave better for the staff and administration then,” first -year Cassandra Larimer said.

This means no running around naked if it rains or major PDA around campus; despite how funny it would be, the staff may get a little upset.