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MEGAN REAM HAS lived in eight different states and the Philippines.

"I know what it's like to be new," she says.

It's part of the reason the history and political science senior became one of the founding members of The Other 49, a new club at ASU for out-of-state students.

Her father was in the U.S. Air Force, so she frequently was the "new kid." Upon coming to ASU, Ream found other out-of-state friends in her Barrett Honors College residence hall and got involved in ASU Women's Rugby and the Omega Phi Alpha service sorority. By getting involved on campus, she felt more at home.

"I felt like I found people like me," she says.

The Other 49 aims to bring together non-resident students who might have a hard time finding their niches on campus, Ream adds.

"It's just nice to have people welcome you that know the area and want you to know the area," Ream says.

The club is so new that they don't have monthly meetings arranged yet. The founders are still constructing its leadership and core membership. But there are plans for fun events in Phoenix, day trips to other places in Arizona and community service events to help out-of-state students on scholarship complete their required service hours.

Brenda Dawson, the club's president and an English literature senior, wants the new club to be "a united front for out-of-state students."

Dawson says the University often doesn't realize the concerns of non-residents. She also says the club hopes to connect out-of-state students from the same states. Ream says that aspect of the club attracted a lot of interest when the group recruited students at the Passport to ASU event on Aug. 22.

The members have a listserv with about 60 students signed up to receive information about club events. "Students' eyes just lit up at that," she says. "We want to introduce people from the same area to each other so they have someone to drive home with. I would have liked to have known that."

Mostly, Dawson hopes to connect new students with ASU veterans.

"I'm a senior and there's a lot of things I wish I had known as a freshman," she says. "Just like knowing where to grocery shop or where to take road trips, stuff that is more local knowledge."

Dawson hopes that imparting such knowledge would help new out-of-state students feel more at home in Tempe. "We want people to get that connection to Tempe, to feel a sense of community and ownership," she says. She added that without help from people who know the area, that connection could be hard to form.

"It's taken a while for me to call this area home over Northern California where I'm from," she says.

A crash-course in 'Living in Arizona 101' is what non-residents need, Ream says.

When she moved here she would have liked more information about what to do around ASU.

"I didn't know about a lot of things to do without a car," Ream says. "I didn't know how cheap some things were."

Ream, who lived last in Memphis, Tenn., before coming to ASU, met a student also from Tennessee in her residence hall her freshman year and is currently dating someone from that area. But she says non-residents find it difficult to locate people from their home state at ASU.

"You can find them, but it's hard," she says. "We want to make it easier."

The number of out-of-state students at ASU was part of what attracted Ream to ASU.

"I wanted to go to a University with that kind of national appeal, so I wouldn't feel like so much of an outsider," she says.

Jennifer Dudley, another founding member of The Other 49 and a journalism and mass communication junior, says she thought the Freshman Year Experience program serves incoming out-of-state students well, but transfer students and older students need assistance, too.

"[FYE] definitely does a really awesome job," she says. "We wouldn't want to impede on that but enhance it specifically for out-of-state students, not just for freshmen but also for transfer students who might find it harder to get involved."

Still, Ream says it feels like ASU focuses more on its in-state students.

"There's a lot of times when ASU forgets how many out-of-state students they have," she says.

In 2001, the University enrolled 13,056 non-resident students, almost 30 percent of the total student population. Dawson and Ream say those students have concerns that need to be addressed. "The University doesn't realize it's inconveniencing us sometimes," Dawson says.

She cited the Thanksgiving weekend as an example. Classes continue until the day before Thanksgiving, leaving out-of-state students little time to fly or drive home for the holiday.

Dawson also says the ASU-UA football game is played at an inconvenient time for out-of-state students. The game is always played on the Friday after Thanksgiving.

"I don't know if that could be changed because it's a long-standing tradition," she says. "Nobody wants to miss Thanksgiving with the family, but everybody wants to be at the big rival game."

"Nobody reads a book on Phoenix before they come here," Ream says. "Maybe we all should have."

"There's so much that's out there," Ream adds. "The Phoenix metro area is such a booming area."

Reach the reporter at sara.thorson@asu.edu.


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