The Colby Echo

Issue date: 3/2/07 Section: News & Features

Media Credit: John DeBruicker

Media Credit: John DeBruicker

As of press time, very much is still yet to be determined regarding how the Class of 2007 will celebrate their last week of classes. The representatives of the senior class continue to have meetings with Kelly Wharton, the director of Student Activities, and Jim Terhune, Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students, to work out how to celebrate safely and effectively this May.

The tradition of seniors drinking champagne on the steps of Miller Library after their final classes went sour last year when three students were arrested for disorderly conduct and more were taken to the hospital on account of their blood alcohol content. At the beginning of the academic year, the administration made it clear that something had to change.

"Really the bottom line is the same thing," Terhune said. "We need to ensure that we don't have a repeat of last year." At their meeting in the spring of last year, the Board of Trustees made it clear that the proceedings at last year's steps were unacceptable. Pete Chenevert, director of Security, has also gone on record as saying he would like to not see the event happen.

"The starting point is to say at this moment there is no senior steps," Terhune said. "If you want there to be one, we're open to that possibility for sure, in fact I very much appreciate that there's a tradition piece of this for a lot of students and I do respect that a great deal."

Terhune and the administration have left it up to the students to come up with a plan that makes sure people stay safe. "We've had some conversations along the way and there hasn't been one point where either I or Kelly or anybody else on our staff has said 'you must do X, Y, or Z,'" he said.

Mark Biggar, one of the Class of 2007 representatives to Presidents' Council, said that he and Annie Mears '07, the other class representative, aim to create something that more students would be interested in doing. Terhune and Biggar both cited the fact that only about 40% of the seniors in past years have taken part in champagne on the steps. "The only way we're getting this done is if we work together," Biggar said. "Our initial proposal of altering the steps was planning something before and after it. We knew that proposal was going to get denied, and it was." Biggar said that the most likely solution would be to plan more of a weekend long set of events in the place of a one hour mess like last year's. There could be perhaps an off-campus event Friday night and then a celebration the following Saturday, but again nothing has been settled. There has also been talk of the possibility of involving the Student Programming Board. The class representatives hope to get something in place before spring break.

Student Government Association President Tom Testo '07 agreed that more of the class needs to get involved with the celebrations than in the past. To him, it was less an issue of dialing back the celebration and more an issue of changing it to something more of the class will want to do. "We don't need to make this smaller, we need to make it bigger," he said.

The class representatives continue to work with the administration, and all sides want to work something out that is fun, safe and inclusive. "If the point is to celebrate the end of four years, it probably isn't a very good celebration when you end up with people getting taken away in handcuffs," Terhune said.

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