Freshman Camp

In the spring of 1926, YMCA staff member Mic Coldwell and the Freshman Program Committee, chaired by Harry Schlenz, decided that the orientation the Y's staff gave freshmen one at a time should reach a larger group in an organized way. They wrote to YMCA secretaries in towns across Illinois, and by the time the first camp opened in early September it was oversubscribed. Soon two three-day camps were held before Freshman Week, with deans, coaches, faculty members and student leaders on the program. The camp mixed recreation with talks on faith, higher education and social issues, and with practical advice on succeeding at the University. In 1937, 3,000 students applied for 300 places. More than 40 colleges copied the idea, and a plaque honoring Coldwell and Schlenz as its originators was installed at College Camp, Lake Geneva.

A 1957 self-study called for ending the camp, and it lapsed in 1957 and 1958 before Fred Miller and Ed Nestingen revived it in 1959. Women took part from 1961 or 1962, when the YWCA became a co-sponsor. Renamed Freshman Conference in 1964, it turned from recreation toward serious talk about college life and the question "Education for what?" The 1968 conference drew 350 freshmen, 70 returning students and 80 faculty members, and its sharp criticism of some University policies led the YMCA's board chair, Bruce Larson, to wonder aloud whether it had become training for activism rather than orientation. In 1971 it became New Student Conference and was opened to transfer students. The last one, in the fall of 1973, drew only 41 students, and an attempt to revive it in 1978 failed. Harold Hannah, writing in 1973, counted more than 10,000 Illinois students who had attended.

Sources: Scott J. Peters, The Promise of Association (1997); Harold W. Hannah, One Hundred Years of Action (1973).