“I think it’s really cool to see how everyone starts out a little hesitant about the only thing,” Holt said. “By the end I’ve only heard that this is students favorite part of orientation. It was my favorite part of orientation when I was a freshman.”
Holt is a junior double majoring in choral musical education and vocal performance while minoring in theatre. She plays the role of Lucy, who flirts with the main character Joe.
“My favorite part of the whole thing is at the beginning,” Holt said. “We’re all singing ‘Welcome to College’ and it’s kind of cheesy and everyone’s like ‘okay this is lame.’ But as the show goes on, people start cracking out of their shells a little bit and by the end of the show everyone is laughing a lot and it’s great.”
Although the musical is only a half hour long, cast members are still given the opportunity to show the depths of their characters because of the social situations presented, such as meeting new people or a house party with alcohol.
The second song of the musical, “It’s Weird,” features three characters who meet in college and discuss their differences as an African American male, a bisexual woman and a Jewish man.
“So it’s just kind of like the song about how they’re all really different but realize they can all be friends and it’s really not a big deal,” Holt said. “That’s one subject it goes into about accepting people, because when you get to college there’s so many different people from high school probably that you interacted with and so it’s a really cool topic about being ready to accept everybody.”
Another song, called “I’m Not That Drunk,” discusses how to handle oneself or others in case of an alcohol-related incident.
“It (the musical) is a very intentional and planned component of New Student Orientation,” Director of NSO, Melanie Payne, said in an email.
Payne directs the orientation program, which involves determining which sessions and programs will be a part of NSO.
Planning the musical has been a collaborative effort since 2008. The NSO began performing it after a student who worked with sexual assault awareness programming and happened to be an aspiring musical theatre writer approached the NSO team with the proposal to write a musical, Payne said.
They have continued to purchase the rights to the musical each year and the writer works with them if it needs to be updated to keep the content relevant.
The musical is unique to IU specifically with references to Welcome Week events and other IU traditions. While the musical is used as a fun break from evaluation tests and academic planning, it also provides a platform for discussing more serious ?matters.
“At NSO, we have always addressed the issues that “Welcome to College” addresses and have done so in many ways,” Payne said. “We held focus groups of students, faculty and staff who work with safety, diversity, programming and student life, throughout the development, to make sure we were hitting the topics needed, and in a way students would respond to.”
The impoprtance behind incoming freshman seeing the musical is the important isssues it portrays. Many incoming freshman have yet to experience living away from home and their families, Payne said. The musical provides an avenue to introduce potentially problematic situations.
“It showcases scenario and decisions that students are often faced with — alcohol, safety, bystander intervention, involvement, diversity and inclusion — in a way that isn’t preachy or boring,” Payne said.
Hearing these topics musicially makes understanding them easier and prepares the audience members if they encounter any of the situations depicted.
“I think that it gives students another light into ways that people can still feel,” Holt said. “When the rape scene happens, I think we’ve gotten everyone so attached to the show by then that they realize that this is actually kind of serious and we’re actually trying to tell them something through this musical.”
The conversations after the musical are important, Payne said. NSO helps students process the musical and put themselves into the situations viewed with a “what would I do and how would I make my decisions along the way?” mentality, Payne said.
While the musical discusses many different themes, the most prevalent is sexual assault — focusing on consent, alcohol and its impact on judgment.
Diversity, as well as self identity, friendships and bystander intervention are other major themes discussed in the musical.
“It conveys students grappling with these issues in some real ways,” Payne said. “Showing that you can choose not to drink and still have a good time with friends and possible scenarios/consequences if you do so irresponsibly, it depicts friends confronting friends, people getting to know others and appreciating our similarities and ?differences.”
