Ah, the end of the yellow brick road, the crossroads between higher education and the “real world.” On Tuesday, March 13, a handful of Boston University’s 4,000 students expecting to graduate in May attended the Commencement information fair in the George Sherman Union Large Ballroom. Among the standard information about graduation registration, financial aid, class rings, career services, and the ever so important legacy gift, was the Senior Week table. The week sponsored by the Student Activities Office includes an exceptional schedule of events including Jake Ivory’s, the Harbor Cruise, the Senior Ball and the President’s Champagne Reception.
SAO does a great job in providing a wide array of exciting events for seniors — or at least a fraction of randomly picked seniors — to enjoy. We’ve all heard stories about which events are not to be missed; however, it is apparently not our choice. SAO program coordinator Mindy Stroh confirmed the capacity of most of the events does not support even half the senior class. Jake Ivory’s and the Harbor Cruise, arguably considered the most popular events offer 500 and 1,000 tickets, respectively. Don’t worry though fellow seniors, unlimited tickets will be available for the Duck Tours and the Champagne Reception.
In the past, the rare senior week tickets were distributed on a first-come, first-served system. This year, however, according to Ms. Stroh and the Senior Week information handout, SAO is “pleased to provide an on-line process to REQUEST tickets for senior week events. Please be aware that this will be the only way to obtain tickets.”
This process will take place between Monday, March 26 and Friday, April 6. After the deadline, when the number of requests is larger than the capacity for certain events, a random selection lottery will be held to determine ticket “awards.”
Outrageous, ridiculous preposterous, unbelievable … my extensive, $30,000 a year vocabulary could go on and on. SAO makes it seem as though senior week events are a privilege or an “award.” They are “pleased” to allow us to “REQUEST” tickets?
Another problem with the random selection is the opportunity to attend events as a group. If four friends “REQUEST” tickets for the Harbor Cruise, and only one of them is “awarded” a ticket, he’ll be waving “bon-voyage” to the other three as he sails away with the 999 other lucky seniors. There has got to be a better system to handle this. While we applaud SAO for their appealing choice of events, it is also their responsibility to better accommodate the large senior class. Until then, I guess we just have to keep our fingers crossed.
Matthew Duffy COM ’01
John Smallcomb SAR ’01
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
