I'm at the same university, and I feel the movement away from Java for introductory programming is a step in the right direction, primarily because of this initial learning curve. The example you've given perfectly demonstrates why Java should not be used as a teaching language - just getting a simple program running, you have thrown at you classes, methods, arrays, packages, access modifiers etc; this serves as a large barrier to learning the important programming concepts.
This isn't a call to "dumb down" Computer Science - the curriculum should still be challenging, but Java is the wrong kind of challenging. Students are spending more time learning how Java works than learning how to program.
We're losing a lot of students who might otherwise love programming if they could see the beauty of it earlier on. Having students learn using a Lisp would be better (hooray for minimal syntax!), but Python is a nice compromise.