With the end of the school year approaching, I find myself frequently dodging tour groups all over Syracuse University’s campus. It seems as if every corner I turn, I bump into another tour group. I see masses of families congealed together, all holding the bright orange SU bag and having the same hopeful look on their faces as they envision their future before them. They are everywhere, and it seems as if the number of visiting students keeps rising.

The prospective students touring campus are becoming a nuisance simply because the groups are so large. As the touring students are approaching the end of the year and thus college decision day, SU students are preparing for finals and the end of the semester, and swarms of people crowding campus are not helping SU students’ stress levels. The university should make these tour groups smaller, both giving current students space to move more freely on campus and allowing potential students to have a more personal touring experience.

The Schine Student Center, for example, is a casual place where students grab lunch, study and hangout with their friends. Though at times it can be crowded, the crazy lunch hours always die down. With the resurrection of tour groups, however, Schine is consistently overwhelmed with people. When I navigate through the crowds, I have to try my best to avoid getting trapped in the overpopulated areas.

SU freshman Anoushka Rao said she’s glad students can tour campus, especially because she, as an international student, was not able to visit. But the crowds on campus now do feel overbearing, she said.

“It is nice that kids get a chance to see it. However, I do feel at times it is a little much,” Rao said.

When I was a prospective student, I loved to tour schools to get a glimpse into college life. Ironically, now that I attend college, I find it bothersome that masses of people crowd the SU campus. Although it is true that there is an importance of visitors getting a sense of college life, SU should try to create smaller, personalized groups.

SU could hire more tour guides or have the tour guides take on more groups to decrease the size of touring groups. Smaller groups mean that visitors would feel comfortable asking more questions, have more time to roam campus and get the chance to tell the tour guide what they’d like to see instead of being anonymous in a big group.

Decreasing the tour group size is a win-win situation, benefiting both the prospective and current students at an equally stressful point in their school careers. With the smaller tour groups, the former would get a fuller college tour while the latter would enjoy a calmer campus environment.

Sophia Leone is a freshman broadcast, digital journalism major with a minor in political science. Her column appears biweekly. She can be reached at seleone@g.syr.edu.

Published on April 26, 2022 at 11:49 pm