Orange and White Welcome Hooks Students on Texas Exes

By Rose Cahalan in Association, TXEX on August 27, 2015 at 12:55 pm | No Comments

Thousands of UT students pass by 2110 San Jacinto Boulevard on any given day. They walk briskly, zip past on bikes, glide by via skateboard, and inch their cars through the crowded crosswalks as they hurry to and from class. Many of them will never enter the building. Some students infer that only alumni are welcome in the Alumni Center, while others simply don’t have a reason to go in. A yearly event called Orange and White Welcome is part of the Texas Exes’ effort to change that.

On Wednesday night, cheerful new banners waved outside the front doors, inviting students to “COME ON IN!” Some 3,000 of them filed into the Alumni Center for a photo booth, games like Jenga and cornhole, coupons from sponsors like Jimmy Johns and Longhorn Fashions, and other festivities. The sheer quantity of free food handed out—including hundreds of Papa Johns pizzas, warm Tiff’s Treats cookies, and Keurig coffee samples—was the stuff of a cash-strapped 19-year-old’s dreams.

Of course, attendees also heard a sales pitch on the benefits of joining the Texas Exes as a student member, from access to alumni panels and networking opportunities to tailgates and the eternally popular free T-shirts. Orange and White Welcome is part of the campus-wide Horns Up Night and Longhorn Welcome.

“It’s important event, because we’re giving them their first taste of Texas Exes and what the Alumni Center is,” says Texas Exes events manager Jessica Laderberg. “We want them to kick off their school year with us, and hopefully later on they’ll end their year and their college career with us at our commencement open house, too.”

 

See some social media highlights from the evening below:

https://storify.com/TexasExes/orange-and-white-welcome-2015

Tags: Orange and White Welcome, orientation, student chapter, student membership, Texas Exes events