Sneek Peek: How a Campus Tour is Refined
If you’ve been on one of our guided campus tours, you’ve heard our tour guides talk about all the facts and statistics and superstitions of Berkeley. But how do they get to the polished final product that they are? Let me walk you through the journey of a campus tour script.
When we’re brand new campus ambassadors, our first step is to read a thousand-page textbook on the history of Berkeley. Just kidding…kind of. We do get a manual with all the information about campus, and we draw from it to write our tour scripts. Did you know that Berkeley has around 14 million volumes in its libraries? Or that South Hall, built in 1873, is the oldest building on campus?
After we go through a series of practice walking tours with our Student Leadership Team and our boss, we get to do our first official walking tour. Yay! Once we’re on the ground with visitors, we might realize there’s some parts we need to adjust. People ask questions, and we kind of get a sense what the most common queries are over time. Because most of the other UCs are on the quarter system, people often assume the same about Berkeley, so I clarify that we’re on the semester system. The Campanile bell tower is 307 feet tall, but since we have international visitors, I like to add that it’s about 93 meters tall.
Here are some other reasons I’ve refined my script.
Based on surroundings
When we’re walking through campus, there are so many inquisitive squirrels that come up to visitors. Once, while I was talking at Optometry Way, a deer ran past our tour group. So if there’s time while we’re walking, I bring up the animals of Berkeley.
Based on what other campus ambassadors say
There’s often several campus tours happening at the same time, so I overhear the stories that other ambassadors tell. One of them was telling their group the story of the Axe trophy. Every year, there’s a Big Game between the Berkeley and Stanford football teams; the winner gets to keep the Axe until the next game. The story is very interesting and involves a police chase through the streets of San Francisco. (Look it up if you’re interested! There’s a Wikipedia page titled “Stanford Axe.”)
Based on facts we learn from visitors
At the top of the Campanile lives a family of peregrine falcons. I know that their Instagram is @cal_falcons, but a kid on my tour told me there’s a website for them as well. I knew that the most recent chicks were named Sol, Nox, Aurora, and Eclipse, and the kid taught me that Sol stands for Solstice and Nox stands for Equinox. I think it’s really cool that they have both a celestial and a seasonal theme – Solstice is like the summer solstice and Equinox is like the vernal equinox, while Sol and Nox represent day and night.
Based on fact checking by chance
I used to tell visitors that Wheeler Hall, which houses our largest lecture room, can fit 2,000 students. One day, after a discussion with some other campus ambassadors, we searched up the real number. It can actually only fit 736 students, which is the number I now share with visitors.
Based on Googling when bored
As campus ambassadors, we also work in the Campanile. When it’s a slow day, it can get boring sometimes, so I like to Google random facts about campus. I found a fact sheet about the bell tower that states it stores around 300,000 fossils in the locked levels.
There’s never a perfect or finalized campus tour script. Much like Berkeley itself, it’s always growing and changing with the campus. For instance, we have discovered 16 periodic table elements, and we have a total of 223 Olympic medals. These numbers are bound to update with new findings and achievements. So I like to think of my script as a living text.