By Megan Kelly
Staff Writer
Student Government held its weekly meeting on Wednesday, March 22, to discuss a new art piece, the T-shirt Swap and the Adirondack chair project.
Kate Kaman and Joel Erland, silversmiths in Philadelphia, presented their plans for an art installation in the Brower Student Center. The design features a 6-foot circular LED screen with brass discs branching off of the screen made to resemble the sun and its rays. The screen will display the position of the sun and phases of the moon, working as a digital sun and moon calendar.
The art piece will be cast into a 20-foot by 15-foot concrete wall and covered by a piece of tempered glass that is one-half inch thick to protect the piece from the elements and vandals.
“All of the sensitive electronics will be on the climate-controlled side of the wall and the exterior side, which is still inside its own waterproof housing, you have… outdoor rated LEDs, which are rated for 50,000 hours or 10 years, so they’re designed to be re-lighted every 10 years,” Erland said.
Kaman and Erland found inspiration for the design in the College’s logo.
“This logo — this shield with the lion and the sun — this was the original inspiration (for the design),” Kaman said.
Erland also credited visiting Hawaii and stargazing as inspiration for them to design something that tracked the positions of the sun. Kaman and Erland also decided not to name the piece, as they figured that the student body would come up with their own name despite it having an official name.
The student body will have the opportunity to come up with name suggestions before SG will vote for the piece.
“Basically what we’re going to do is create a Google form and it’ll be an open-comment sort of thing,” said Kevin Kim, executive president of SG.
After the presentation, Vice President of Student Services Lindsay Thomas reminded everyone that the T-shirt Swap will take place on Wednesday, March 29, from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.
Vice President of Community Relations Michael O’Connor announced that the Adirondack chair project had to be delayed due to unforeseen costs.
“There were some things that weren’t accounted for, and I think what I’m going to do is reduce the amount of chairs that we originally wanted to be able to afford that,” O’Connor said.
O’Connor also announced that the PB&J Race will take place on April 13 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Teams of five will compete to make as many peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as possible in a certain amount of time. All of the sandwiches will be donated to the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen. The deadline to register for the race is Friday, March 31, and it costs $20 per team to join.
The Class of 2019 was fully funded for a digital scavenger hunt. An app will be developed specifically for the hunt and students will go around and find the listed places, people or things. A date for the event and prize for the winner has yet to be determined, but they hope to schedule it for a Sunday in April.
