COVID-19 Response & Updates
The health and safety of our students, employees, and visitors are of the utmost importance to the University.
If you have questions about how the Office of New Student Orientation is handling safety for COVID-19, contact us via email at orientation@louisiana.edu.
New Student Orientation Changes
NEW AS OF 7/1/2020: New Student Orientation this year is in a fully online format. New students will complete Orientation and Advising virtually. Freshman Week & Transfer Student Activities will be still be held, but sessions will be a mixture of virtual and in-person.
New Student Convocation and Cajun Connection (mandatory events for Freshmen) will now take place virtually and will still be required for Freshmen to complete. Freshmen will be given access to these events in Moodle beginning on August 13, 2020.
Learn more about New Student Orientation.
All Freshman Week activities events are subject to change pending COVID-19 guidance from University officials. If that happens, students will be alerted via email and updates will be posted on this website.
Orientation Fee Changes
Because we are no longer able to provide meals and host our intended in-person orientation events during Freshman Week, the Office of Orientation will be issuing a partial refund of the orientation fee. Continue reading for a description of what the orientation fee covers.
- Freshman students who have already paid the $125 freshman orientation fee will be refunded $90.
- Transfer and Adult students who have already paid the $60 transfer and adult orientation fee will be refunded $25.
Beginning on July 1, students who register for orientation will now pay $35 for their summer 2020 orientation experience. This fee includes the online orientation as well as all printed materials, a Ragin' Cajun spirit t-shirt, lanyard, pen and bag (to be given out at the beginning of the Fall semester - more information to come on the distribution of these items).
IMPORTANT - Partial Fee Refund Process:
We have to manually issue refunds back to student’s individual accounts. This process will take time as there are over 2,700 refunds to be issued. To be fair, we will issue these partial refunds in the order received, starting with those who paid their orientation fee in February and continuing to those who paid the full fee at the end of June. Our goal is to have all students refunded by Monday, August 17. Once the refund is issued, it can take up to 2 weeks for the refund to appear on the credit card statement. We are unable to change the credit card account that the refund is issued to – it must go back to the original credit card.
Registering for Classes
You will complete academic advising and register for your fall classes during the virtual portion of Orientation. Instructions for advising and registering are under steps 5 and 6 on the Orientation page.
Parent & Family Orientation Changes
Parent & Family Orientation has moved completely online.
Access the 2020 Online Parent & Family Orientation.
SOUL Camp Changes
As of 7/15/2020 – With the recent surge of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations in Lafayette Parish and the state of Louisiana, and after many discussions with current students, office staff, and university administration, we have made the decision to move SOUL Camp to a virtual format.
Campers will be able to participate in SOUL Camp at home - no events will take place physically in Lafayette. We are still planning to have our fundamental SOUL Camp activities in this virtual space – the activities that we know have the largest impact to an incoming freshman’s transition to college.
Registered campers should keep their original SOUL Camp dates free on their calendars. A revised schedule for these new virtual SOUL Camp experiences will be available soon. Full refunds will be provided to all registered campers.
Click here to read the full update.
Other Information
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