Director of Student Activities Julie Thornton, however, claims that 12 to 18 months are needed to work out the flaws in every new building. Student perceptions of the Danforth University Center (DUC), she believes, will improve as the University corrects those flaws.

“Whatever opinions people have now will change over time as we work out the kinks of the building,” Thornton said.

Phyllis Jackson, the assistant director of Event Services, agrees with Thornton.

“Right now, just because it is a new facility, there are some policy issues that need to be worked out,” Jackson said.

Performance student groups feel especially affected by what they view as the lack of space in the DUC, which hinders their opportunities to hold practices and rehearsals.

The South Asian student organization Ashoka, which hosts its Diwali performance every winter in the Edison Theatre, is one of those groups.

“Although Ashoka loves the DUC and what it has to offer the campus, to be honest, it doesn’t provide much use for us as a student group,” Ashoka Co-President and junior Kashyap Tadisina said.

According to Thornton, student groups that perform annually in the Edison Theatre or require rehearsal space will naturally have issues with the architecture of the DUC.

“What we have [in the DUC] are meeting rooms,” Thornton said.

Ashoka acknowledges the fact that the DUC is primarily used as a meeting area and that the group still remains mostly reliant on the Mallinckrodt Center for rehearsal space.

“We can only use [the DUC] for executive meetings,” Tadisina said. “The spaces don’t lend themselves to our uses as well as Mallinckrodt does.”

Tadisina says that the Gargoyle and the food court in Mallinckrodt are good spaces for performance practices.

“It also provides a center to access Edison Theatre, whether it is during ticket sales or during the days of the Diwali performance,” he said. “As of right now, the DUC is off-limits for dancing in their rooms, so if we lose Mallinckrodt and all of its practice spaces and don’t add other spaces, we are at a loss as far as where to prepare for a student-run production such as Diwali.”

The former food court in Mallinckrodt is easily converted into a rehearsal space, since the room is already furnished with wooden floors and mirrors on the walls. Some spaces also remain available in the Wohl Center, where Diwali’s hip-hop dancers practice every weekend for their performance.

The University has future plans to renovate Mallinckrodt, but the yearlong period for those renovations may cause problems for student groups such as Ashoka. The reconstruction plans, however, include preserving the space in the Gargoyle.

Thornton says that the DUC, unlike Mallinckrodt, was never built to serve as a space for rehearsals. She said that comparing the two buildings is like “comparing apples to oranges.”

According to Jackson, many student groups have reserved spaces in the DUC for general body meetings. Likewise, many groups have used the commons area for larger events, such as a function hosted by the Society of Women Engineers.

DUC has also seen significant tabling by student groups, and the Dance Marathon student group has made use of the patio in the northeast corner courtyard.

Despite complaints, Thornton believes that the school is still at a “better place than where we once were.”

Already this school year, Student Union hosted a session where student groups could give feedback on the DUC; more than 200 student group presidents attended.

According to Thornton, groups voiced a significant amount of constructive criticism. Since the session, several changes have been made to the DUC and more information has been distributed on how to take advantage of its resources.

“Overall, we love the DUC, what it offers to the students [and] its place on campus, but do not feel that it is a replacement by any means for Mallinckrodt,” Tadisina said.

Why was everyone so riled up about Randy’s column? I’ve heard a couple of reasons.

The first is that its method was disrespectful and poorly executed. Criticism is fine, people said, but not when it is displayed in such a way. The Orientation Executive Board implies the same thing in their letter to the editor: They “would appreciate constructive criticism” sent to their e-mail address in clear opposition to what they thought Brachman’s article perpetrated.

I thought his criticism was indeed constructive: Most mandatory events entailed being talked at. Other events made it hard to interact with other freshmen. Events went late and caused sleep deprivation. Events were not memorable.

And his method, though perhaps not expert, was honest. He began with an introduction of self: “I am a freshman, and here is my personal experience.” He claims no more authority than that. He admits that he likes winning, and he acknowledges the reader-writer pact. His tone is sincere.

Comments and letters to the editor in opposition to the article, though, were generally neither constructive nor expertly formulated. Two of the comments were bitterly sarcastic: “I think your humility will truly benefit the WU community” and “I am sure that constructive criticism and positive thinking would do much to spare next year’s freshmen from suffering such a horrible fate as yours.” Needless to say, not only are these writers jerks, but also their style contradicts their own assertions.

And if we are talking about poor execution, let’s talk about the letters to the editor. I won’t point out particular parts in Joseph Marcus’ letter because I admire him for putting himself out there in the name of positivity, but I will say that I am surprised that nobody commented about his writing style—when we agree with the content, we let poor execution slip by, though we pounce on it feverishly when we think it purports controversial beliefs.

The Orientation executives’ letter, on the other hand, bothers me not so much with its sterile verbage but with its own lack of support for its claims. The “freshman orientation evaluation from this year,” on which Orientation activities appear to be “highly ranked as fun programs,” doesn’t have any bearing at all on Brachman’s claims. He made legitimate criticisms, and high “fun” rankings (and number one rankings for helpfulness in preparing for Wash. U.—duh) don’t refute those. Only good sense does, and we don’t see that in the Executive Board’s letter.

I understand as well the second criticism of Brachman’s article, and perhaps the one that most inflamed tempers: that many people had worked very hard on Orientation this year for very little compensation. A lot, indeed, was put into this event.

But hear this: Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, Student Life comes out with a staff editorial criticizing something in the University that has gone wrong. Last Monday, it was communication about construction. Now, I cannot even imagine the amount of resources going into construction right now and the amount of effort going into the links between Clayco, Residential Life and Washington University as a whole. It is on their minds, to be sure. But they still do a terrible job at this communication. Nobody has any idea what is going on with construction. This need to change. Using so many resources to do a job so poorly is even sadder than not having tried in the first place.

The same goes for all Student Life staff editorials, and the same goes for Student Life columns. People, generally, do the best they can. They know the goal, and they are working toward it. But sometimes they do an awful job. That’s where we step in, as an entity not so entrenched in the relevant work as to be blind to its macro results.

People work hard, but often they need to change anyway. Communication about construction certainly does. Maybe Orientation needs to change as well.