Why is college freshman orientation two weeks?

This baffles me.  I’m sure I had freshman orientation when I was dropped off by my sister at Manchester College in the fall of 1957.  Was it a day, half a day, to learn the names of the campus buildings and admire the upper classmen and learn how to get our weekly quota of clean sheets in Oakwood Hall and learn the meal routine in the dining room (where I gained 20 lbs.)?  But that’s just not good enough for our delicate millennials.  They have to be brain washed—even if their families are liberals, it won’t be good enough.  The strings to normalcy must be cut and cauterized.  And for conservatives?  Wow.  Let’s hope their parents warned them.  This is from an excerpt on Facebook written by a dad attending parts of his son’s orientation.  He thought it couldn’t get worse, but it did . . .

They had a ceremony with speakers, singing by the glee club, etc. The kids received an inspirational coin, etc. I looked on the program. "Oh good. An invocation." Being the apparently naive person that I am, I was not prepared for what I heard. A "moment for prayer and meditation" turned into a cross between a confession and admonition about how selfish we are, how we've taken more from the earth than we give, and how we hope to heal the planet. it ended with "in your many names we pray." I opened my eyes, looked at my wife and rolled my eyes.

Afterward I reminded my son that he's in the midst of severe liberals. He smiled and agreed. It will be interesting to follow this over the next several years.