Why USC students will have less time between move-in day and the start of class

A solar eclipse and an effort to curb risky behavior will shorten the time that University of South Carolina students normally get between move-in day and their first day of class.

Most USC freshmen will begin moving into their dorms on Tuesday, Aug. 22 – a day after an Aug. 21 total solar eclipse that officials expect will draw some 600,000 tourists to Columbia.

USC students will start class two days later on Thursday, after the shortest adjustment-to-college period in recent years.

The state’s flagship university says it had two reasons to tighten the class-free period, which offers new students a chance to make friends, join clubs, pick up textbooks, find their classrooms and, in some cases, get into trouble.

One is that pushing back move-in day will help incoming students and parents avoid the sold-out hotels and traffic jams guaranteed to accompany the total solar eclipse earlier that week.

The other is an effort, started last year, to reduce the first-year students’ “unstructured free time, decreasing the chance they will experience boredom, homesickness or engage in risky behaviors,” USC spokesman Jeff Stensland told The State newspaper.

For years, USC students have had nearly a week to get used to the college environment before classes start. Often, they moved in on a Saturday in mid-August. Classes then started the following Thursday.

In the meantime, USC busied students with a mix of optional and mandatory Welcome Week events.

Those included First Night Carolina, a freshman mixer at Russell House or at Williams Brice Stadium; convocations; outdoor movie nights; the First-Year Reading Experience; job fairs; poster sales; cookouts; and volunteer opportunities.

USC still offers some of those events. But its Welcome Week now overlaps more with class.

Last year, acting on a panel’s recommendations, the school reduced its class-free welcome period to four days. This year, with the eclipse encroaching, it is down to two.

“There’s so many factors that play in this year with the eclipse. It’s a good year for us to try a new structure and see how it affects student behavior,” USC student body president Ross Lordo said. “The university has done a good job of trying to offer a plethora of activities that students enjoy and extending Welcome Week into the school year.”

Of course, not everyone is moving in after the eclipse.

USC expects about 2,500 students already will be on campus, including band members, some student-athletes and students in the Gamecock Gateway educational bridge program with Midlands Tech.

Sorority recruits in matching T-shirts will swarm the campus for rush a full week before classes start.

USC has plenty for them to do leading up to the eclipse at 2:41 p.m. on Aug. 21, including displays of astronomical books and documents at USC’s Hollings Library, and a public lecture on the history of solar eclipses and what humans have learned from them.

USC’s Department of Physics and Astronomy also will operate solar telescopes to view the eclipse at 10 locations across campus.

This story was originally published July 26, 2017 at 4:16 PM.