Senior Week is on. again. for now.
This year's senior class council, in an effort to revive the infamous tradition, has made many admirable changes to Senior Week this year. The event is coming back, hopefully, bigger and better. It is scheduled to include events like a champagne toast with College President R. Barbara Gitenstein,
a lakeside picnic and a revised version of PlayFair.
These changes are certainly admirable, but I am skeptical that they are enough to overcome the biggest change to Senior Week since last year: There will still be no alcohol allowed in Travers/Wolfe halls.
Last year, banning alcohol from the Towers was a major factor in why there was no Senior Week. This year, despite the interesting and ambitious events added to Senior Week, its downfall may once again be the Towers alcohol policy.
Seniors, juniors and maybe even sophomores know Senior Week as that infamous, near-mythical event that culminates most seniors' college graduations. For upperclassmen particularly, it is the week when everyone returns to the Towers, gets plastered and says goodbye to the College.
I'm not saying that is all Senior Week could or should be. Personally, I have no interest in partaking in the infamous Towers-style celebration. But I know I'm a minority. And even if I wasn't, most, if not all, seniors are at least 21 and are hyper-aware of this fact.
Not allowing drinking in the Towers could sink this Senior Week like it sunk last year's, grand and ambitious though it is. Unfortunatly, the simple fact is that seniors and juniors here still remember when Senior Week was known for one thing and one thing only: drinking in the Towers. For many, the opportunity to experience that particular aspect of Senior Week is what they've waited four years for.
Until the College gets a class who doesn't remember or dream of experiencing the infamy of past Senior Weeks, new bells and whistles are unfortunately unlikely to ensure Senior Week really is on this time.
- Michelle McGuinness, Editor-in-Chief
