A Picture Is Worth 1,000 Words: Move-in 2016
Photos capture the arrival of nearly 11,500 students
What does it takes to move to college? Ask any parent or student who’s been through it and you’ll inevitably get a shudder as they recall the morass of packing, the travel by plane, train, and automobile, the orchestrated chaos of finding your dorm and lugging everything to your room, and the last minute trips to Target or Bed Bath & Beyond. Multiply that times 11,496—the number of students living on campus this year—and you have some sense of what the annual migration called Move-in is like.
It began on Monday, August 29, with the arrival of 1,499 students: athletes, orientation leaders, and the 750 freshmen and transfer students taking part in BU’s First-Year Student Outreach Project, the Community Service Center volunteer program that places students with nonprofits across the city.
Wednesday was the most heavily trafficked day, with 1,615 students signed up for the final Orientation session and another 1,320 moving in as well. Thursday (853) and Friday (938) saw relatively light traffic. But Saturday was another hectic day, with 2,600 arrivals, followed by 1,739 more on Sunday.
The whole process was aided and abetted by the 195 upperclassmen, faculty, and staff who volunteered for this year’s Scarlet Squad, and by more than two dozen Boston University Police Department officers who kept traffic moving and cheerfully gave directions each day of Move-in.
“The whole week was awesome,” says Marc Robillard, executive director for auxiliary services. “People were in a great mood.” And that, he says, was thanks in large part to the streak of good weather. Earlier in the week, forecasters had warned that Hurricane Hermine might strike the Boston area, but happily, it brought only some light rain after Move-in was over.
“Weather accounts for 90 percent of the success of any Move-in,” Robillard says. “When it’s dry and people aren’t getting soaked moving from Point A to Point B, they’re happy.”
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