With the 2025 fall semester rapidly approaching and the class of 2029 getting ready to take their first step on campus, what better time to get to know the brains behind the beautiful tradition at Bates known as AESOP?
AESOP, or Annual Entering Students Orientation Programs, is the orientation program at Bates that sends entering students on various three day trips and experiences around Maine. Trips range from beach games and chilling to backcountry backpacking adventures in state parks.
These trips are often a highlight of the first-year experience, providing opportunities to connect with fellow entering students as well as older students. However, it is no small feat to arrange and organize these trips.
AESOP coordinators take on the tremendous task of planning trips, hiring leaders and looking for ways to improve the program.
The AESOP coordinator team is a student-led team made up of three head coordinators and three assistant coordinators. They receive support from the Office of Campus Life and prep all year long for the following year’s trips, including ironing out all the kinks that come with planning the many trips that take place over the course of the trip weekend.
Most coordinators, or ‘coords’, have led their own trips and explored the ins and outs of AESOP. But, with their role as a coordinator, their perspective on the program has shifted their lens and readjusted their thinking outside of just an AESOPer or an AESOP leader. Every year, these coordinators are given the task to reflect on their trip, look for ways to improve it and even create new trips that top the previous ones.
The Bates Student connected with a few AESOP Coordinators to find out what it’s like to plan one of the most anticipated events for first-years. This year, the head coordinators are Sam Rice ‘26, Sivani Arvapalli ‘26 and Ty Stearns ‘26. The assistant coordinators are Aliza Savin ‘27, Genevieve Unterseher ‘27 and Zain Ali ‘27.
So why become an AESOP coordinator?
Sivani Arvapalli ‘26 shared that “after being a leader, I realized I have so much love for the program as a whole from top to bottom and wanted to help out even more.”
She believes that AESOP is the best situation for students to ease into their new college life. “AESOP brings together groups of people who may have never crossed paths at Bates in an inclusive and fun environment,” Arvapalli said.
The coords have a lot of passion for this annual experience and truly find pleasure in helping others ease into this new stage of their life. The team continues to promote the values of inclusivity and community.
Aside from loving the journey of AESOP, some coords find the motivation to join the coordinator team to make improvements to the program.
Ty Stearns ‘26, another head coordinator, elaborated that one of his group leaders unexpectedly got injured days before the trip and his coords had to step in and assign a new leader.
This experience showed Stearns that coordinators have the willingness to help and take the initiative when circumstances are compromised.
Stearns added that, “with all the confusion that happened with that trip, my allergy-friendly food was forgotten in the process, so I ended up not really eating much for the trip, which I have a good laugh about today.”
While he now finds humor in the situation, he expressed that he is eager to use the opportunity he has as a coord to make such experiences better for everyone involved.
There really is no other job on campus like an AESOP coordinator. They work with Campus Life, students and first years. They also work with a large majority of the campus demographic.
Without the passion and commitment of AESOP coords, there would be no weird people dressed in firefighter hats around campus waiting anxiously for their interviews. Without them, we wouldn’t continue to see the dried mango evenly distributed to each trip every year. Ultimately, without our AESOP coords, AESOP wouldn’t be AESOP.
