This year's sophomore family weekend narrowly escaped being titled "High Five."
"We decided that name wouldn't have worked, though," said Zach Rubeo '05, who was in charge of coordinating volunteers for the weekend on behalf of the 2005 Class Council.
Rubeo remembered finding an appropriate name as one of the greater challenges that the weekend's planning committee faced. One frustrated committee member even suggested naming it "It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt," he recalled.
But the weekend was successfully christened "Hawaii '05"--a pun on the song title "Hawaii 5-0"-- and eventually drew over 700 family members to campus.
The weekend featured diverse events, intended to allow families to spend the weekend within a "microcosm of the Dartmouth experience"--including stargazing, an AREA art opening and a 5K run along the Connecticut River.
Academic lectures also offered families food for thought. Offerings ranged from music professor Steve Swayne's "Carmen: Still Sexy After All These Years" to "Sound and Fury Signifying Something: Some Thoughts for the Curious and the Skeptical About Why the Humanities [Really] Matter" by classics professor Paul Christesen to government professor Allen Stam's "American Foreign Policy and the Spread of Democracy."
Other events, organized by Sabrina Singh '05 and Nicki Sass '05 -- such as "Cartoons and Doughnuts" and an outdoor movie Saturday night -- specifically targeted younger family members.
Organizers unanimously reported that the weekend had run smoothly. Steve Joseph '05 said that there was little or nothing he would change about the weekend: "There was nothing that didn't go well. We've been receiving lots of positive feedback," he said.
Joseph said that as he understood it, the Class Council's planning efforts this year were more decentralized than they had been in past years.
Previously, the two chairs of the central planning committee, working with a single faculty advisor, coordinated almost all of the weekend's events.
This year, the committee chairs allocated the responsibility for planning certain categories of events to a number of sub-committees -- so that, for example, one group concentrated on planning Dartmouth Outing Club-related events, and another focused on T-shirt design.
Rubeo also thought that the Student Activities Office had taken on a greater role in planning this year's events than before.
All of the student organizers were quick to credit director of Student Activities Linda Kennedy, coordinator of student programs Lena Previll and Vi Le '03, also of the Student Activities Office, for their help in planning logistical aspects of the weekend.
Trisha Grant '05, who was in charge of supplying food for all of the weekend's events, was equally pleased about how the weekend turned out.
Perhaps the best testament to her hard work was the fact that free food was available in such copious quantities that she "didn't have to use DBA all weekend, and my family didn't have to mooch off my DBA, either."
She added that she was especially enjoyed the strawberry shortcake served on the BEMA Saturday afternoon.
