A Response to: Manresa Makes it Complicated

By Emily Croft, Staff Writer

Manresa isn’t for everybody. As someone who served on the Manresa Core this past year, I know that for a fact

Despite the mixed feelings, Manresa is an opportunity for Xavier to open its doors and welcome 1,250 new students to campus as brand new Musketeers. This opportunity is not only an honor but a privilege, which is why we take the entire year to plan the program. 

I served on the Manresa Core with four other talented undergraduates from Nov. 2022 until this August. To be qualified for this internship, you have to have been an orientation leader previously and passionate about the work you do. It involves long hours, hard decisions and being very meticulous when it comes to Excel sheets and how to use EngageXU. 

With this job also comes challenges and failures — I won’t deny this. It’s no easy task to manage a week-long event that takes up the entirety of campus and cares for a collective 1,400 students. 

I will stand by the fact that we should have communicated better to any incoming first-year, any member of our team and anyone just curious about orientation. 

What I won’t stand for is falsely accusing our team of “not trying.” While it is true that University Station switched its management over the summer, making early move-in an obstacle for our team, what was missing from the opinion in last week’s edition was a copy of the countless emails, phone calls and physical visits to University Station that our team participated in. We deeply care for each person on our team and would never sit back and allow them to struggle with housing. As a tenant myself, I was in the exact same situation as others on our team. I’m deeply saddened that there are people on our campus who wouldn’t trust that we were trying our absolute best to handle the situation. 

On the outside, it may have looked as if our silence was a bad thing. In reality, it was our team working with other parts of Xavier to create a compromise and solution. The members of the orientation team do nothing but serve our school and our peers with their time and resources. We would never leave them out to dry. 

Manresa is a program where one must pay attention to detail. You have to take care of the little things, like which students are in which small group, how much time it will take for students to get from point A to point B before we start the next activity or what events will build community and camaraderie within the first-year class. All of these details feed into the final goal of making the Class of 2027 feel at home here in Cincinnati and at Xavier. 

I hope that you will learn to appreciate the work of Manresa, whether you enjoyed the program or hated it. More importantly, I hope you all will understand the intricacy of the behind-the-scenes and give us grace as our program continues to grow. 

I’d like to personally apologize to anyone who had a negative Manresa experience. While there’s only so much our team could have done, we would never want anyone to not enjoy their time in the program. If you ever want to make a change, you can apply to be an orientation leader yourself and eventually make your way onto Core, where you too can feel what it’s like to truly be in this position. 

I cannot thank this program enough for our success this year. Our team was made up of gifted and kind individuals, and they are the reason the program is amazing. Each and every one of them has a special place in my heart and the rest of Core’s. Thank you for being on our block.