Move-In Day 2014

The scene is a familiar one: cars lining the streets, packed to capacity, new students milling about and meeting their neighbors, parents giving final words of advice.

“The sun is shining and the excitement is palpable,” interim UO president Scott Coltrane said Thursday morning as he helped members of the class of 2018 move into their new homes away from home: the campus residence halls.

About 3,000 new UO students moved to campus on the traditional move-in day this week, marking perhaps the largest transition in their lives to date. The rain held off and the clouds occasionally parted as waves of students and their families schlepped belongings to residence hall rooms Sept. 25.

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In coordination with the mass arrival of new students, volunteers from the UO community helped them lug dorm essentials from cars to their new rooms as part of the fourth annual Unpack the Quack effort. Volunteers’ tasks weren’t restricted to manual labor, though. The ultimate goal was to create a friendly and inclusive environment.

“It’s definitely welcoming,” said Max Lehman, a student volunteer who remembers how helpful the volunteers were when he moved into the dorms two years ago. “It’s a great way to meet some freshman and get them acclimated to campus.”

Darting to and fro amid the move-in day hubbub were quite a few members of the UO administration, offering their own greetings while they helped new students carry boxes full of clothes, bedspreads, not-so-mini fridges and of course, the ever-popular Keurig coffeemaker.

“It establishes the culture of our campus,” Rian Satterwhite, director of the UO’s Holden Leadership Center, said of Unpack the Quack. “It’s showing our newest community members that there are people beyond their parents that are excited that they’re here.”

Echoing that enthusiasm was Sheryl Eyster, associate dean of students. For her, there is no feeling like that of move-in day in the fall. She loves seeing such excitement in the faces of those arriving to campus.

“This is my favorite time of the year,” Eyster said. “I love greeting them to the university and letting them see this new community that is welcoming them. It’s all part of being a Duck.”

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Perhaps the student with the best move-in day story to tell her friends back home is Maddie Hall, who was surprised to have the both Coltrane and Robin Holmes, vice president of student life, offer to help take her luggage to her second-floor dorm in the Bean complex.

“I felt like a movie star,” Hall said of the crowd of photographers vying to take her picture with the interim president. “I was so shocked, but it was awesome. We moved all my stuff in only two trips!”

Coltrane smiled when he heard Hall’s reaction to her temporary celebrity status. Unpack the Quack is all about helping students such as Hall and getting to know them as they begin their lives at the university, he said.

“My favorite part is meeting people, finding out where they came from and watching them pick their side of the dorm and meet their new roommates,” Coltrane said. “This transition is great and we’re here to show the students what kind of community we have and how helpful we can be.”

—By Nathaniel Brown, Public Affairs Communications intern