Of the pre-frosh, by the pre-frosh, and for the pre-frosh

Yalies2004.com: one freshman's attempt to ease the transition to Yale life for his fellow classmates.

Summertime boredom often drives otherwise normal, well-adjusted Yale students to engage in such unhealthy activities as marathon viewings of Real World reruns or even premature blue-book shopping. But for Brad Rosen, ES '04, then a soon-to-be-Yalie, ennui and a desire to meet his fellow classmates before arriving in New Haven provided the impetus for www.Yalies2004.com, a website designed to suit the unique needs of the incoming class of freshmen.

According to Rosen, the initial idea for the site occurred to him soon after returning from Bulldog Days activities in May. Frustrated by the lack of a means of communicating with his bulldog compatriots before September, Rosen had Yalies2004.com up and running within two days of his return from Yale. "At first I kind of put [the site] up as a joke," Rosen confessed. "I thought, 'Let's just see where it goes.'"

That 'joke' soon developed into a thriving online resource for members of the Yale class of 2004, with chat capabilities, packing lists, message boards and discussion forums, "virtual colleges," and even tutorials on how to use the "Pantheon." According to Rosen, the site enjoyed its greatest periods of expansion during the months of May and June. He stated, "The number of pre-frosh registered on the site kept jumping up, from 50 to 100, 150, 250." Within three months of its initial creation, traffic on the site became so great that Rosen felt compelled to change his host from Geocities.com to the more expensive Tripod.com server. This turned out to be a wise move, as at the site's peak, according to Rosen, "page views numbered in the 6000s and 7000s."

Rosen, who published his first webpage in the 6th grade, attributes Yalies2004.com's rapid expansion to simple word of mouth publicity. The site made its way into a southern-Californian mailing list and spread to much of California from there. Meanwhile, the site was also widely successful on the East Coast near Rosen's home state of New Jersey. In fact, several get-togethers of pre-frosh in the New York City Metropolitan area were coordinated through the website, including a party, a sushi dinner, a sleepover at Rosen's house, and a concert in Central Park.

According to Amsalu Dabela, CC '04, word about Yalies2004.com spread most quickly after rooming assignments were mailed out to incoming freshmen in June because students who had already joined the database quickly informed their new suitemates about the site. Dabela, who submitted her own profile in mid-June shortly after finding out about it, hopes to help Rosen out with the site's content in the future.

Yalies2004.com has been receiving mixed reviews from the day of its inception. Many of the plaudits have come from freshmen, who see the site as an invaluable means of making contact with their fellow classmates. Upperclassmen, on the other hand, have displayed a much more cynical attitude about the whole affair. According to Rosen, the most common complaints from upperclassmen attack his 'overzealousness' in creating the webpage.

Members of the Yale technological community also had mixed sentiments. According to David Davies, Manager of Student Computing and Student Services at Yale's Academic Media & Technology, the site was "difficult to navigate and visually challenging." In addition, Davies stated that the site "had erroneous information, at least about Yale's computer resources." All in all, Davies found that Rosen "might have benefited from more Yale staff and student input," noting however that he did not "believe that Yale should devote staff and/or student hours to contributing to such a site." Davies also cautioned that "incoming freshmen should check out Yale resources before resorting to some non-Yale site like yalies2004.com," noting that "in the discussion board, many students were asking questions that were better answered elsewhere."

Brad Rosen, ES '04, is the creater of Yalies2004.com

In response to Davies' comments, Rosen stated, "The Yale resources are in no way freshman friendly, nor are they freshman orientated. Yale does not give the freshman class a forum to meet each other, and that is what I provided." He also added, "The fact of the matter is that many students who were confused by the deluge of seeming uncoordinated material sent by Yale found an easy answer, albeit sometimes incorrect." Finally, he stated that "Davies is correct in saying that yalies2004.com is not a substitute for an official yale resource. However, if one freshman can get a fourth of the incoming freshman class on his webpage without advertising and without help from Yale, I would think the administration would take a hint and provide a service like this for future years."

Allen Dodson (SM '02), webmaster of Silliman College's webpage, was highly complimentary of Yalies2004.com. "The site seems to contain just about everything a future Yalie could want in order to get to know their classmates prior to arrival in New Haven," he said. Dodson also noted that the site "allows the members of the class of 2004 to get in touch over the summer in a way that other Yale sites can't because the information on the incoming class is not available to us yet, and because having students submit their own information means that only the most reliable contact info that the students wish to release will be posted."

One particularly popular feature of Yalies2004.com is the directory of Yale freshmen, with entries for individual students that include a photograph, email address, and other voluntarily submitted personal information. Although this feature seems at first to closely resemble the online facebook provided by sites such as Silliman's, Dodson does not view it as redundant. He stated, "The Silliman page does provide some contact info through the online facebook (which does not include incoming freshmen), and I have traditionally posted a letter of greeting to the page over the summer for the benefit of the incoming class, but overall the purposes of the pages is different, so I would not say there is significant overlap in function."

Dabela stated that the site "helps alleviate students' reservations and fears about coming to college and being in a totally new environment where they don't know anybody." In fact, Rosen himself forged several new friendships through the site with students from around the country. For example, Rosen recounts meeting a freshman named Beth Wallace (ES '04) through his page and exchanging pictures. Later, at a panel discussion at the Yale Club of New York, Rosen recalls encountering Wallace soon after arriving. "We were so shocked that the first people we saw were each other!" Rosen said.

As for the future of Yalies2004.com, Rosen envisions such features as a registry by means of which "the class of 2005 can contact the people whose suite they now have to get ideas about space management" and other issues. Given the level of enthusiasm demonstrated by Rosen for the site thus far, chances are that the site will continue to expand and to serve the needs of the class of 2004, regardless of any future criticism or negative sentiment.

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