Opinion

Colgate dismisses congenial gesture

By Cailin Chang ’13, Kayla Safran ’13

April 11, 2013

As the co-chairs of Hamilton College’s Campus Activities Board (CAB) and members of the Hamilton College Community, we feel the need to both clarify and correct many of the misleading and false statements that appeared in a rather mean-spirited article published by Colgate University’s student newspaper, The Maroon-News on Thursday, April 4.

The article, titled “Hamilton College Seeks Relationship with Colgate SGA,” suggested that by contacting Matt Ford, the president of Colgate’s Student Government Association (SGA), members of Hamilton’s CAB were not looking to forge a relationship of mutual benefit but one that would be to Hamilton’s advantage.

Ford cites Spring Party Weekend—in essence, Colgate’s Class and Charter Day concert—as the main reason he believes that CAB would be interested in working with SGA, claiming that our college “had buses last year going every half hour” between Hamilton and Colgate.

Firstly, neither Hamilton CAB nor Hamilton Student Assembly (SA) funded or organized any buses to attend Colgate’s Spring Party Weekend last year. (Indeed, the majority of our boards’ members were unaware of the event’s existence.) While we regret that  certain individual members of the Hamilton community acted inappropriately at Colgate’s event, we believe it is hardly fair to conflate the behavior of a few individuals with the character of the entire Hamilton student body, especially when such accusations can easily cut both ways.

Secondly, when our CAB Concerts Coordinator reached out to Colgate’s SGA about a potential partnership between our events boards, she did so with the most sincere intentions of beginning a mutually beneficial relationship between our two schools.

When members of Colgate SGA responded enthusiastically, informing us that they were “extremely interested” in this possibility, we hoped that our organizations would soon establish a precedent of mutual support that could benefit all of our students, and were therefore especially surprised and disappointed about the appearance of this article.

It is indeed a shame that Colgate’s Student Body President feels that Hamilton doesn’t bring as much “to the table” as does Colgate. We guess we won’t be seeing them for Macklemore this spring. (But if we do, we’re sure they’ll be on their best behavior.)
 

Editor’s note: A version of this article will appear in next week’s issue of The Maroon-News as a Letter to the Editor.

All Opinion