Bison Week 2025
About this Event
RENAISSANCE: New Student Orientation at Howard University
Others are just going to college. You are coming to the Mecca.
Orientation at Howard has the deepest meaning. It represents a journey that spans generations and oceans. It is the culmination of the hopes and dreams of people around the world, including the millions of Africans forcibly brought to America through the Middle Passage, subjected to enslaved oppression, racial discrimination, and substandard socio-economic conditions, only to rise as world leaders in intellectual exploration, scientific discovery, artistic expression, athletic superiority, humanistic investigation, social mechanics, invention, professional achievement, and cultural influence. Howard, like no other place on Earth, has beckoned the brightest minds, the bravest change agents, the most creative geniuses, and the most luminous scholars. Each fall, they are drawn to Howard’s campus, and they arrive in droves of brilliance demonstrating awesome strength and power, like a herd of Bison.
Across the world this fall, young adults are leaving their parents’ houses and making their way to college campuses. They are both eager and anxious, looking forward to the next stage of their life journey while nervous about taking full charge of their personhood for the first time. And, in tandem, their colleges are hosting new student orientations for them, in hopes of easing their transition and, tangentially, indoctrinating them into their college cultures.
At Howard, orientation represents a Renaissance, much like the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s led by Howard graduate Zora Neal Hurston and Howard faculty icon Alain Locke. For the new student, it is a grand renewal of aspiration and a metamorphosis of potential into actualization, of student into scholar, and hope into reality. For the Howard legacy, it is its literal lifeblood, as those who will continue the university’s transformative global leadership take their place in the sacred lineage. As they take their first collegiate steps and take residence in the exact places where history’s most impactful luminaries began their journey of excellence, they ensure the perpetuation of Howard’s singular mission to permeate the world with truth and service.
