Editorial; March 5, 2012

As graduation looms—countdowns, bar nights and soirees galore—our dwindling time at Conn becomes more evident with each passing day. Second semester is Twilight Zone-themed: class Monday through Thursday. Senior event on Friday. Bar on Saturday. Library on Sunday. Rinse, lather, repeat—the senior year time loop. The cacophony of the monotony is deafening.

Senior privileges are slowly receding: parking is now a confusing mess of lottery systems and levels of campus instead of the privilege by class year we once knew; Housefellow positions, among the most senior roles a student can take on campus, are now open to underclassmen. The uniqueness of the senior experience has been challenged.

During the presumed most special time of our lives, that’s all we want: something special. The culmination of the past four years should end in reflection, change and growth, aided both by our professors and our peers. Instead, it’s been whittled down to one question: beer or wine?

SGA has started a new dialogue about social events on campus; the senior class council should do the same. The senior events, thus far, have been hypocritical—let’s end a four-year conversation about the rampant drinking culture with school-sanctioned drinking!—and repetitive, plastic bracelets and drink tickets littering every senior’s floor once a week.

We are not calling for a new Prohibition. We realize that events are planned in a way to attract the highest number of people, and people like alcohol. We also like alcohol, but that’s not all we like.

It’s easy to regress into the Cro dance norm and the simplicity of freshman year—it’s safe, it’s been done before, and it helps us forget that we’re leaving. But there needs to be a palpable difference between then and now, and the current program of events has largely failed to make that distinction real. We want to feel like we are moving on—away from the traditional college fun and towards life after college. What we are seeking is some recognition that we will be living completely different lives in six weeks and experience that transformation with the rest of the senior class. We are leaving this place very soon, yet our celebrations of the end of our time here has thus far been little more than a repetition of the past three and a half years. Upcoming senior events should be more imaginative in their celebration of our past here as well as of our future beyond this campus.

Think of the possibilities: plan a dance that will encourage more than grinding, like salsa or ballroom. Bring faculty and students together for a fancy dinner so that seniors can schmooze with their favorite professors one last time. Show us a movie, rent us a karaoke machine, ask us trivia, or just take us down to Buck Lodge so that we can see what’s inside. Even renting out the dilapidated yet charming Galaxy Roller Rink would be a welcome (and awesome) change of pace. Our world isn’t limited to the 1962 Room.

The senior events should reflect the people we’ve become in the past four years: intellectual, curious, witty, opinionated, motivated and involved. As much as we all adore guzzling PBR with our classmates in a white room with the same music in the background, aren’t we entitled to something more stimulating? After all, we’re more than three free beers.

– David Liakos, Ipek Bakir, Ethan Harfenist and Jazmine Hughes