Each year, after beds are made and bags are unpacked, new Batesies join the decades-old tradition of AESOP. The Annual Entering Students Orientation Program (AESOP) involves  trips and activities for small groups of incoming students, led by returning student leaders, with the goal of fostering inclusivity, enduring friendships, and a strong connection to place. The Class of 2030, the third largest in Bates history, gathered to kick off AESOP on Friday, Aug. 28 — the day after move-in day. The following day, with energy high and coolers loaded, AESOP leaders rallied first-year students to head out for their first full weekend as Batesies. 

This was the fifth year that Catie Luedee, associate director of outdoor education and programs, has headed up the AESOP program. What comes together in September — with a feeling of whimsy and fun despite lots of scaffolding planning — has been in the works for 11 months, with Luedee training new head coordinators each year. 

In preparation for this year’s AESOP, 118 student leaders participated in a week-long training on campus, including everything from driver training road tests to equity and inclusion workshops. Several 12-hour days were broken up mid-week with off-campus trips — a version of AESOP for the leaders to connect with one another. This week of AESOP training, led by coordinators and campus partners, helped create a safe, inclusive, and fun environment to welcome the Class of 2030. 

This year, the three head coordinators were Carly Buck ’27 of Arlington, Mass., Alexander Voglmayr ’27 of Washington D.C., and Zain Ali ’27 of Mason, Ohio. 

As vans drive away and the campus empties of new students, Luedee and the coordinators are busy back on campus, keeping the wheels moving. Chase Hall’s Memorial Commons becomes what Luedee calls “the control center.” “When the trips are out,” Luedee said, “my student coordinators and I are there packing lunch coolers, fielding phone calls from leaders, solving problems small and large, and doing anything and everything to make sure that first-years have a good time on their AESOP trip.” It’s hard work to make the trips feel easy, and Luedee and her team manage it well. “I won’t lie, though,” Luedee said, “I wish I was up in Acadia during AESOP.”

Why do these students serving as head coordinators spend all of this time planning and facilitating to make AESOP possible? When they could be leading a trip to Acadia or simply sleeping in before classes are back in session, these head coordinators spend their days behind the scenes with Luedee for one reason: because they see AESOP trips as “pivotal.”

“AESOP really gives you three days to slow down,” Ali said. “You hang out with only a group of roughly 10 people for three days and really ground yourself in what college is, what are the types of people you’ll be spending your time with, and the friendships you’ll be fostering and making.”

Talk to Bates students and alums about their AESOP experiences, and you’ll hear story after story about friendships that formed in those first few days. Coordinators and student leaders work hard to create an atmosphere that fosters connections, and a lot of that comes from the training before the trips even begin. 

Voglmayr was drawn to be a head coordinator in part because of the ways that student leaders center authenticity on the AESOP trips, setting the tone for the ways that students can show up at Bates. “We really are training our leaders into being their most authentic selves and showing their AESOPers that they can be their most authentic selves within different frameworks at Bates,” Voglmayr said.

Buck celebrates the ways that AESOP trips connect students to “so many different parts of Maine.” But she agrees that in addition to the amazing places and communities that students experience, it’s the people that make AESOP so unique. “The program is so strong because we have upperclassmen who are so excited about meeting first-years and giving them that great experience.”

“One piece of advice for every first year,” Ali said, “is to take that opportunity, be your authentic self, and really just enjoy this experience with your fellow first-years and your leaders, because it is one I still think of fondly whenever I reflect back at my time at Bates College.”

Buck, Ali, and Voglmayr helped train 118 student leaders for 59 AESOP trips this year. AESOP trips explored a variety of experiences, from filmmaking on campus to surfing in coastal Maine to exploring Lewiston/Auburn to backpacking in the Bigelow Range. This year, 37 AESOPs were off campus with 22 staying on campus. Here you’ll find reflections from Charlotte Comrack ’27 of Washington, D.C., about being a leader this year and read below to hear about one first-year student’s AESOP experience. 

The pivot: A first-year student’s AESOP experience 

Zahra Saidi ’30 of Auburn, Maine, approached her AESOP experience as “a godsent excuse to meet people.” And not just that; she had some expectations for lasting relationships: “First reading the AESOP email, I envisioned a bonded group of people who could eventually become friends.”

She signed up for a trip that would have taken her to the Rangeley area, as a member of the Appalachian Trail Maintenance AESOP. (Bates students have historically maintained a 3.6-mile section of the AT in Rangeley.) The prospect was exciting, and within her comfort zone. Hiking is “a traditional family activity,” she said. “We always go hiking on vacations and our new year, Nowruz.”

Originally from Afghanistan, Saidi came to the United States in 2022 with her mother and some of her siblings. One sister, Fatima ’17, lives in Auburn. Her sister Sakina graduated from Bates in May and her brother, Masood, is a member of the Class of 2029.

But three days before the trip, Saidi injured her toe. Could she still be useful and happy on a trail-clearing trip, with a lot of walking?

“For the worse and for the best, a day before the AESOP I met with Brenna [Callahan, the director of Health Services and student well-being] and we decided it would be better if I changed my trip to one that sleeps on campus.”

Saidi then changed to the EVO Rock Climbing AESOP, which involved day trips to climb at the Portland EVO gym, but she  had some hesitations; “I had never done rock climbing before.” She worried at the prospect her peers might judge her. “I did not want my teammates and leaders to perceive me as someone weak and basically useless and not fun.” But she took the leap and tried it.

“And for the hundredth time, I realized once again that we — humans — are looking but never paying attention,” Saidi said. “We are individually curated on ourselves more than caring about someone else. When I was on the wall looking down at the distance I had climbed, I was more afraid to fall than thinking what others would think of me. I saw some friends cheering for me down below. I saw others climbing boulders and some chilling.”

The AESOP trip came to be more than what she’d expected. She learned people’s stories and about their ways of living. Perhaps most important, she met people she knows she wants to be part of her life at Bates. “People who will be someone I seek in Commons after classes.”