Mandatory orientation: Should it stay or should it go? What’s the first thing that pops into your head when you hear mandatory? It’s something you have to do. This year for the first time ever, MATC made it mandatory to attend an orientation before you were to be accepted into the program of your choice. Now the question is: Do you think we should HAVE to attend an orientation in order to be a student here at MATC?

A common response among the students interviewed was that the orientation was surprisingly beneficial.

Juanita Rivera, a first-year Culinary Arts student here at MATC shared some positive feedback. She said “The orientation itself was very informative.”

Seleste Hermann did not attend the orientation, as it was not required when she transferred to MATC. When asked if she would have benefited from the orientation, she agreed and said, “It would have been nice to have an initial overview of the campus and what MATC has to offer. It would have been more familiar and not so overwhelming come the first day of class.”

Zack Cole and Mina Martinez also had a number of things to say about the mandatory orientation. They found a lot of things useful, and had it not been for the orientation, they would not have known about all of the resources available to MATC students.

All in all is this a good thing that it’s mandatory or not? Out of the number of students who were interviewed the responses were positive. Students were exposed to things such as the U-pass, TCF student accounts, available transfer programs, blackboard and parking.

Everyone received some information that helped them start this semester off on a positive note.

Mina Martinez (Nathaniel Martin)

Juanita Herman (Nathaniel Martin)