Inauguration Draws Only Two Gripes
Letter from the Editor

This weekend’s inauguration festivities have already elicited many well deserves praises, but I have two complaints: one on the part of the students and one on the part of the administration. First and foremost, I was very disappointed that student turnout at President Oxtoby’s inauguration was unbelievably low. In my less-than-scientific estimation, only about 10 percent of the student body attended the ceremony. Inaugurating a new president for the college has only happened nine times since the college was opened in 1887, assuming their was a certain amount of pomp and circumstance over our first president, despite the fact that the college didn’t really exist. Secondly, representatives from over eighty higher educational institutions, from England to local community colleges, all attended in respect and reverence for higher education, while many students could not tear themselves away from the normal doings of a Saturday afternoon, like sitting in the sun. President Oxtoby is incredibly enthusiastic about helping students, and supporting him would have been a gesture of good faith on the part of the student body.

My second complaint is in regards to the food service for the weekend. Certainly, the extravagant dinner on the quadrangle was both delicious and an extraordinary opportunity for the normally North/South divided campus to eat together. However, students were never told that a meal would be subtracted from their meal plan, catching many students by surprise through the weekend. A simple notification would have been nice, and subtracting this meal closer to Saturday night would also have beneficiary, since taking away student meals before they have a change to eat them seems unfair. I would assume that there are enough uneaten meals every week to help fund the dinner adequately, especially considering the already extravagant costs sunk into lights, trustee fundraisers at historic hotels, and entertainment.