April 11, 2013
On Thursday, April 4, The Colgate Maroon-News published an article titled, “Hamilton College Seeks Relationship with Colgate SGA,” in which writer Amanda Golden ’15 stated her student body’s disinterest in collaborating with Hamilton’s Campus Activities Board (CAB) to promote entertainment events at both schools. While CAB’s outreach to Colgate’s Student Government Association (SGA) was meant only to increase dialogue between the two campuses with respect to events that could appeal to Hamilton and Colgate students alike, SGA President Matt Ford ’13 saw the attempt at forging a friendship as as an opportunistic move. While we respect Ford’s opinion, we do not understand how increased Hamilton-Colgate relations could be anything but mutually beneficial, as both schools have unique assets to offer one another.
Both Hamilton and Colgate host a number of impressive music, comedy and dance performances every semester, many of which are open to the public. In his statement, Ford cites Spring Party Weekend (SPW) as a Colgate event that attracted the attention of Hamilton students last year, with shuttles “going every half hour” between the two schools so that Hamiltonians could see Avicii perform. While we cannot definitively refute this claim, we can remind Colgate that SPW is an event that anyone--Colgate community member or not--may attend. The same goes for our Class and Charter concert. We believe that emphasizing the ability for anyone to attend these spring concerts and publicizing them at both campuses would help to create something closer to the outdoor music festival environment that both events seek to create.
Plus, it’s not like collaborating has hurt either school in the past. Though it might not be something students think about often, if ever, Hamilton and Colgate already share resources on a daily basis. Both schools are members of the academic library consortium ConnectNY, which allows students to request books that aren’t available at their own college libraries from 14 schools in the region. The resource, which became available this year, has undoubtedly saved a handful of seniors during thesis crunchtime, as well as helped out underclassmen who might have simply been looking for pleasure-reads that their own college libraries simply did not carry.
Our schools share more than just close locations, but similar academic principles and student interests, as well. It seems, in many ways, a waste to not take advantage of these commonalities at momentous times of the year.
The opening of Hamilton’s Wellin Museum has offered Hamilton and Colgate another forum on which they might work cooperatively. Our newest addition to the campus map could provide a space for Art and Art History concentrators at Colgate to display their own art or study their peers’ work, as well as a place for Hamilton and Colgate students to showcase their creativity alongside one another.
Hamilton and Colgate are both small schools with big brains. Isn’t it obvious that two teams working together can accomplish more than one working alone?
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