High school seniors have only a week left before they must decide where they’re attending college next fall, so April, as usual, has seen our campus inundated with accepted applicants who are still debating between our institution and others.

Many of these prospective freshmen stay on the South 40 for a day or two with an Overnight Welcome Leader (OWL), an arrangement that allows visitors the ability to learn from a current Washington University student about life on the Danforth Campus, free from parental control or administrative oversight.

This arrangement is a risky proposition for the school—with the demand for OWLs far greater than the supply, the only qualification for becoming one is interest, and little training is offered to the overnight hosts to ensure that they advertise our university in a positive manner.

There are irrefutable benefits to the OWL system, to be sure. Unlike the normal information session and tour offered to visiting students and parents, staying overnight with a current student gives pre-frosh an unadulterated glimpse into life at Wash. U., which helps strip away the admissions-office-fed, cookie-cutter facts discussed on tours. A large part of college life glossed over on admissions tours is the social scene, and high-schoolers staying on weekends can often see this side of Wash. U. life.

But most pre-frosh are assigned to OWLs with seemingly little rhyme or reason going in to the pairing process, and improving placement would be a step to improve the overall visitation experience. The OWL system could take a lesson from the admissions tours: tour guides give brief biographies so visitors can follow a guide whose background matches theirs, but high-schoolers staying overnight don’t seem to be afforded that same luxury.

It shouldn’t be too difficult to take extracurricular interests or cultural and personal background into account when making OWL assignments. If an overnight visitor is interested in student government, he should stay with an OWL involved in Congress of the South 40 or Student Union; if a high-schooler comes from a small, rural town and is nervous about making the potential transition to a larger school near a city, she should be able to learn about such an experience from an OWL who’s been through it.

We acknowledge the difficulty in creating these matches given the lack of available OWLs, but rather than simply ascribing pairing problems to this broader issue, steps should be taken to improve this root cause as well. Making the OWL position more lucrative and desirable, perhaps through the promise of reimbursed meals, would benefit our school in the long run, given that OWLs have the power to sway students either to or away from attending Wash. U.

Ultimately, whether it is a tour guide or OWL or even an older friend or sibling from home who attends Wash. U., the one chief point of contact who provides high-schoolers with exposure to University life provides a strong framework or basis for viewing the school. It’s an unavoidable part of the process of applying to and deciding between colleges, but steps can still be taken to make it better.