UD students gear up for coming school year

“People are happy,” she said. “You always get the gauge by how they are in the line, the anxiety level. We’ve had a lot of really happy people.”

Wallace said about 400 volunteers, including freshmen who moved in early and UD’s football team, helped to move people in.

She encouraged locals to stop and welcome people to Dayton this weekend, especially if they see students who seem lost. Local businesses should also be busy this weekend with families in town.

“This is good for the University of Dayton, this influx of new people, new families,” she said. “Dayton has so much to offer that people don’t even realize, so put your shingle out.”

UD’s family weekend will be on Sept. 30 and Oct. 1, she said, encouraging local businesses to plan for that weekend.

Rishaad White, a first-year Flyer Promise student at UD, was helping other first-years move in the same day. He said his own move-in, about a week prior, had gone smoothly.

Flyer Promise is a scholarship program for students at partner high schools in the region. Many students in the program are Black students or immigrants who attended high schools in the city of Dayton.

White said he was excited to live on his own and to start some of his civil engineering classes, especially one hands-on lab class.

“Honestly, just being an adult for the first time,” he said, when asked if there was anything he was excited about for the upcoming year. “Just figuring things out for myself and making my own decisions.”

Tierra Freeman, a senior at UD in marketing with a minor in racial justice, said she tells freshmen to take advantage of all the opportunities they can, but also to know when to say no. She also encouraged students to get to know their professors.

She had been able to work at a company in South Africa that past summer through the university, she said.

“I’d never have gotten to do that if I hadn’t been open to opportunity,” she said.

Freeman said one of the highlights of her time at UD so far has been working with the university to create spaces for Black people like her to talk to each other and find community, something she said the university and the president, Eric Spina, are prioritizing.

“I think we have a president who, that’s one of his focuses, is making sure that we’re comfortable and that he’s letting them know that the university does accept everyone and wants you to come as you are,” she said.

UD said its have more than 11,000 undergraduate, graduate, doctoral and law school students attending this year. The university also projects record graduation rates, UD said.