Why need a ‘passport’?

Freshmen at colleges all over the nation have more and more requirements by the year. Some of these are helpful, and some are just tedious and get in the way of everyday life.
Here at St. Bonaventure, we have to take University 101, and a lot of requirements come tied in with that course.
As a part of the required University 101 class, we as freshmen must attend a certain amount of “passport events.”
These events are about all things around campus. Some of these things are required no matter what, but there are also certain passport events that we get to pick on our own and attend.
Some things could be regarding a club, or it could be just someone giving a speech. The problem with attending these events is that it can easily be seen as a waste of time. Often, a lot of people don’t necessarily want to go to these events.
Even more often, people tend to need to do other things instead of these passport events, but we must go to the passport events instead.
As freshmen in college, we are all adjusting to something so new and a lot of us kind of feel out of place and are just trying to find our place in our new life.
But instead of adjusting to all these changes and trying to figure things out, we have to go to passport events.
It just seems unnecessary to me that we have to go to all these things when there are so many other things we could and should be doing.
It seems kind of ironic that we are expected to attend all these events for our benefit, and the point of them is to get us more acclimated to school, however, all it feels like is an interruption in the process of getting adjusted to school.
All the requirements that come with University 101 just feel like an inconvenient part of college because it seems like our time could be better spent doing homework or working on something for the clubs we are already involved in.
A lot of the requirements given to us as freshmen beyond the first few days don’t seem entirely necessary.
More than anything, they just tend to get in the way of everyday life and the process of getting used to college life. That’s why the requirements given to freshmen should be cut down to be a lot less.
Elyse Kuhn is a contributing writer for the Bona Venture. Her email is kuhnee16@bonaventure.edu