THAT’S A REAL SHAME: Georgetown U. students miffed pre-orientation program no longer ‘identity-focused.’

According to The Hoya, the center’s Young Leaders in Education, Advocacy & Dialogue program, aka YLEAD, was changed last August to Total Hoya Readiness: Intro to Vocation and Experience, or THRIVE, which no longer has programming related to identity and diversity.

YLEAD used to “foster dialogue” about “ability, ethnicity, gender, nationality, race, religion, age, sexual orientation, and social class,” according to the Hoya’s review of the center’s archived webpages.

Solene DeGaynor, a former YLEAD participant who later became a THRIVE coordinator, said she was “disappointed” the university moved away from the original program.

“We did a lot of presentations on what it means to be a woman on campus, what it means to be a person of color in a predominantly white institution,” DeGaynor said. “That was really helpful in terms of understanding how identity intersects and plays a role in how you operate on a college campus.”

DeGaynor added that the new THRIVE is more about “academic success” and “access[ing] to all of the resources” at Georgetown.

Campus relations were so much better before schools started to “foster dialogue” about “ability, ethnicity, gender, nationality, race, religion, age, sexual orientation, and social class.”