My freshman year was 2000. The school did a commendable job in trying to host social events the first week - ice cream socials, musicians and the like, which continued sporadically through the rest of the year. (Like every Thursday night they'd have entertainment come in or the like).
My dorm was single occupancy rooms, so we were allowed to keep our doors open. The suite style rooms had to keep the outer doors shut because they were "a fire hazard." We had lounges in every dorm building to hang out in too - usually had a tv, a kitchen, pool tables.
I met most of my friends in my classes, to be honest. Two of them I met in my honors humanities class, and they introduced me to all the people they'd met in their dorm. (I was in the suites and wound up transferring to the single rooms to be closer to them.) One of them wound up introducing me one night to a girl he knew who became my best friend.
We didn't have Facebook and most of us didn't have cell phones back then. But we did have AOL instant messenger, which made it easy to coordinate with each other - "heading to dinner, wanna come?", etc.
I would suggest that he go to as many social events as possible, even if he might not be so interested in the "psychic" or whatever it is. I met my best guy friend when I was running an ice cream social (he was a freshman, I was a junior). You never know who you might meet at one!
Good luck to him!
