Heading out on FOOT

Bob Handelman

View full image

Bob Handelman

View full image

“The leaders are mid-chant,” says Ketty Nguyen ’25. She’s the “poobah,” or cochair—along with Ben Crair ’25—of this year’s First-year Outdoor Orientation Trips (FOOT), and she’s explaining why there’s a circle of students on the New Haven Green. It was 7:30 a.m. on August 22, and 640 first-years had been loaded into buses and were waiting to head out for their orientation camping trips. With the first-years ready to go, the 190 FOOT leaders—sophomores, juniors, and seniors—formed a circle on the Green for their “oom gala—a bunch of silly words we say together,” says Nguyen. “We do it before May training and before the FOOT trips depart. It’s getting up the energy.”

FOOT, launched in 1984 as a way to bring together small groups of incoming students in the days before classes began, is now one of nine orientation options under the Camp Yale umbrella. (First-years must choose one.) Although FOOT has grown dramatically over the years, some of the traditions haven’t changed. After the “oom gala,” says Nguyen, “we feel like one group about to go into the woods to do something awesome.”