Like a singer drowned in the Mississippi or slumped over a toilet, needle in vein, we seem incapable of acknowledging fleeting beauty until it has flit. Here on campus, something precious, whose fragility we noticed not, has been lost. The college has scheduled thirteen (like the thirteenth guest at the Last Supper, Judas Iscariot) courses during common hour next semester. The time, from 12:30 through 1:30 every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, was an hour of sustenance, rest, and cultural engagement for students. We were the audience of Common Hour Concerts and participants in Come Friday Forums. No longer. Perhaps this ratzákh is truly necessary to accommodate scheduling disruptions from the demolition of Poisson, but the loss of our common hour is not an insignificant one.

Certain mid-range notes resonate with the concealed floorboards of the Chapel Art Center, vibrating the floor noticeably when the piano sounds them. This kinetic input, combined with the recent heatwave, music, and the visual polychronism of the Center’s painted ceiling and modern exhibition, makes for a heady experience. The music professors of the fine arts department performed an excellent concert last Thursday. The setlist ranged from contemporary to baroque, biased towards the 19th Century. It was a lovely show; each piece was performed excellently. Worth special praise are Professor Johnny Mok and Tianhong Yang, who played a trio of sonatas on cello and piano to conclude the evening. 

The most prolific SGA senator is graduating senior Patrick Marcoux, who has authored and co-sponsored more resolutions than any other current student. This past Friday, the last session of the Crump-Mickens administration, he wrote three successful resolutions. First, he called for installing ultraviolet protections in the rare books collection of Geisel Library. College archivist Keith Chevalier addressed the senate in favor of that motion, and it passed unanimously. Second, the senate unanimously joined Senator Marcoux in asking, “All present and future large-scale building projects be presented to the Student Senate.” The body felt that there was insufficient student input on the planned destruction of Poisson and its replacement. Most controversially, he proposed that rising honors freshmen and sophomores receive priority in the housing lottery. This selfless proposal by Senator Marcoux (not an honors student) would mean that the lowest, and best, numbers in both tranches of lottery numbers go to students enrolled in the honors program. Junior Senator Kevin Macarelli said the housing resolution “came out of left field,” claiming that the bill insinuated the rest of the student body was morons. When asked to yield for clarification, Macarelli refused. The resolution passed anyways. Two other resolutions, not written by Senator Marcoux, passed, bringing the evening’s total to five. This has been a rather pathetic year for SGA, with only seven resolutions passed, less than a third of what was accomplished in the 2022-23 session. At the very least, the final session was memorable.

A too-soon requiem for the Class of 2023 – there is no point grasping at the granite steps guarding Alumni Hall. The time of your passing was sealed when you responded to an email or clicked through a soulless link some four years ago. It is the curse of the college that her students and memories are scoured so regularly and with such magnificent efficiency. The loss is not just borne by you, the forgotten and departed, but also by the institution at whose feet you labored and learned. With you, abandons us the memory of a time before AVI, a time when the Common Ground Cafe was more than a lie we tell prospective students, and a time before the visitor center blighted our grounds with oppressive blandness, even worse inside than out. You, seniors, are the last students who saw the Hilltop before Covid. Before disease and SEAL asphyxiated our clubs’ activities and budgets, you were the last to visit Quebec with the French Club. However, I ask that you elders, the terminal patients among us, shed no tears for those you leave behind. We have hope. New traditions will rise, and new memories will be made. We persevere. I would say that the Class of 2023 will be missed, but we mourners will be swept away too.