This year’s incoming freshmen marched together across campus to Mizzou Arena Aug. 15 to meet coaches and school officials and to learn their first Mizzou traditions at First Roar. 4,173 students seated themselves in the stands behind the hoop and listened to a list of speakers including coaches Cuonzo Martin and Barry Odom, Chancellor Alexander Cartwright and Missouri Students Association President Julia Wopata.
First Roar is the newest addition to Mizzou’s ‘Welcome Week.’ The Alumni Association Student Board founded the event in hope of beginning another strong Mizzou tradition, one of the few where an entire class will come together.
New Student Programs and the AASB worked together on First Roar, with the AASB handing out T-shirts and getting students excited for the event.
Galen Bacharier, a sophomore journalism student, works in the external committee of AASB, which helps coordinate sponsorships for events.
“A lot of students come here and they’ve never attended a Mizzou football game, they’ve never attended a Mizzou basketball game,” Bacharier said. “They come in and there are all these sorts of things they’re doing during the game, traditions wise — the alma mater, the fight song — and they have no idea what any of these are.”
Alongside traditions education, another aim of First Roar, like most Welcome Week traditions, is to get incoming students excited about the community.
“That should be a goal of every event in the first few weeks — getting people out and meeting others, and forming those bonds early on through a common event,” Bacharier said. “We have stuff like that but it doesn’t happen very often. Pretty much Senior Sendoff, Tiger Walk and not even really graduation. Those are the few times you see pretty much your whole class in one place, and I think we saw that at First Roar.”
Freshman Michela Saverino, a pre-nursing major from Kansas City, attended First Roar and walked from Tiger Plaza to Mizzou Arena with friends she had made during sorority recruitment.
“They got us a T-shirt, and we all put them on together,” Saverino said We were all unified and it made us feel like we were at home. Everyone’s there for the first time just like you are, and that’s really comforting.”
_Edited by Caitlyn Rosen | crosen@themaneater.com_