Construction for the Institute’s new office is scheduled to begin this spring, so that it can move into the new space between commencement and June 1, Director of the DUC Leslie Heusted says.

Remaining space on the floor will be converted into a new media suite to include offices for print publications Washington University Political Review, Hatchet Yearbook, One World magazine and Spires literary magazine. The expanded space will also include the DUC recording studio and WUTV. It is also possible that KWUR will move there as well.

The Gephardt Center is currently located in Eliot Hall and will move before Eliot is demolished.

“That portion of the construction will be happening over the spring once we have confirmed plans because of that timeline—because of Eliot,” Heusted said.

Jill Carnaghi, assistant vice chancellor for students, noted that the DUC seemed like a logical place to move the Gephardt Institute.

“They work with a big number of students, so the University center seemed like an ideal location with the Community Service Office located here and parking underneath,” she said.

Heusted says the institute will be a positive addition to the DUC.

“I am really excited about the Gephardt Center moving into the building and onto the third floor. It is a focal point for the community; it’s a connection between Washington University and the community,” she said.

“We’ve been in this building for three years now; we are looking to enhance student media spaces,” Carnahgi said.

Heusted said that the new space will allow student media groups to work more closely with one another.

“This has allowed us to take a second look at how the media groups interact and there is endless potential for collaboration for the media groups, and this helped us tap into some of that potential,” she said.

Carnaghi said it is likely that KWUR will eventually move from its space in the Ann W. Olin Women’s Building into a space in the DUC. Students involved in KWUR are currently discussing the possibility of moving to the DUC with University administrators.

Huested noted that the renovation will also add more common space to the third floor, which few students view as a hangout.

Josh Goldman | Student Life

Alyssa Beebe, left, and Margaret Tudor, right, dance, while other members of Boomshaka, the student drum, dance and rhythm ensemble from Northwestern University, keep the beat outside the Danforth University Center on Tuesday afternoon. The group decided to spend their spring break at a friend’s house in St. Louis and came to the University to lighten the mood during midterms.

Ben Gottesdiener | Student Life

Students participate in the national Mix It Up at lunch day, an event that encourages students to meet new people and cross social boundaries. Mix It Up is an annual nationwide event. Student Involvement and Leadership and Connect4 hosted the event this year.

The students went to the DUC on Tuesday to participate in a diversity experiment known as Mix It Up, a national event that Washington University has taken a part in for the past two years.

Mix It Up at Lunch Day, the national event, is held at schools and colleges all over the nation. Last year, more than 100 University students, faculty and staff attended the event. Organizers hoped to attract more people this year by publicizing through Facebook and e-mail and offering an impressive new menu of food from all over St. Louis.

The event was originally created by Teaching Tolerance, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center. The non-profit which lays out the main ideas for the event and suggests activities, but each school puts its own twist on the idea, according to the event’s organizer, junior Nikki Desai.

The University’s Mix It Up was a collaboration between Connect 4 and the Student Involvement and Leadership Office.

The event was formulated to randomize each table: Each attendee would walk in, put his or her name on a name tag, and take a piece of candy from a big bowl. Each type of candy corresponded to a table where the attendee would sit. Food was served buffet style, including sandwiches, breakfast for lunch, tapas and more. After serving themselves, attendees would ideally sit down at these randomly “diversified” tables and meet new people whom they normally wouldn’t sit with at lunch.

There was a line of people going out the door and chatter filled the room. Students and faculty members of all different races and ages sat together.

In the hopes of attracting more people, the organizers set out to advertise to as many people as possible.

“We pretty much told every single student group, every single freshman floor, every single person that we physically, possibly could,” Desai said.

Sophomore Camille Young, one of the organizers of the event, said that the more people they attracted to the event, the more diversity and new connections there would be.

This year’s new feature was to serve food from all over St. Louis, which Desai says helps add to the community-unification aspect of the day.

Some students who showed up didn’t even know what the event was for.

“I’m here because someone told me there was free food,” freshman John Rincon said. Event organizers recognized the draw of food and even counted on it as a factor to help bring out more students.

“We want to reach everyone from different student groups, different activity groups—even just people that are hungry,” Young said.

Regardless of their reasons for coming, the attendees seemed to realize that the event was intended to take them out of their comfort zones.

“I think there is a bubble mentality. It’s much easier to be around people that are similar to you,” said junior Rebecca Slotkin, who attended the event.

“I think it’s going to take more talking about it instead of just watching it happen to change things,” sophomore Christine Diepenbrock said.

Dialogue, according to Young, is the main purpose of the lunch.

“Our goal is to get people to reach outside their comfort zone, to meet people they normally wouldn’t have,” she said.

Slotkin felt that the event was effective.

“Every year, you get a class of a thousand or so students, and the whole student body changes,” she said. “It’s really interesting to meet different people from all different backgrounds.”

Young says that although this event acts as a starting point, it’s really up to the attendees to make a change.

“Mix It Up puts the question out there of ‘Who am I hanging out with? Who am I spending my time with?’ From there, it’s an individual effort,” Young said.

After about an hour of studying and catching glimpses of the text, talk and walks, I began to appreciate how hard it was for people to use their phones and walk at the same time. If they added bubble gum to the mix we would’ve probably needed an ambulance. A few people did display an elegant swagger to talking and texting while they traveled throughout the building, but they were the minority. A few phone pros really didn’t compare to the ones that looked like a bull in a china shop. One young male, who was texting as he got up from his table, clumsily tipped over his coffee. Another girl answered her phone, started digging through her purse and knocked over her books. But the best one occurred when I was getting up to grab a drink. A very tall slender girl was walking at a fast pace from the area of the DUC were the food trays get dropped off. She was texting on her phone with her head down, and before anyone knew it she had crossed through the maze of scattered chairs and tables and walked smack dab into the side of the wall near the bathrooms and dropped everything she was carrying, including herself. She was scuffed up a little, but the meeting between her and the wall really wasn’t that bad. She gazed around the room with the embarrassed look that someone has when they walk into a wall, if there is such a look. So I guess it’s okay for people to be allowed to text and talk on their phones. However, it would be entertaining if they were forced to run while they do it. This way at least the rest of us who are annoyed by them can now be entertained when they crash into things.

Elizabeth Macdonald, viola da gambist and the music department’s director of strings, played alongside former doctoral student Charles Metz on harpsichord.

On Oct. 14, pianist Peter Henderson will play a program that includes Beethoven’s “‘Waldstein’ Sonata in C major, op.53.” On Nov. 16, the husband and wife pair of Thomas Labé and Hyunsoon Whang will perform. Both are pianists whose program includes pieces from Schubert and Ravel.

John and Paula Kasica, another married couple, will close out the series on Dec. 9. Both perform with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra: John as a percussionist and Paula as a flutist.

All of the concerts are free and begin at 8 p.m. in the DUC.

Possibly the best film of 2010 so far, “Toy Story 3” returns to Woody and Buzz as they suffer a midlife crisis of sorts when Andy, their owner, packs and leaves for college. All the new characters, especially Ken, are just as memorable as the series’ threepeaters. Pixar manages to keep everything funny and fast-paced, and it only gets sad at the end (beware!). Because seating is limited, people are encouraged to bring blankets, which will be doubly useful in damming your tears as you come to terms with being a terrible toy owner. Or maybe that’s just me.

All Greek organizations host philanthropy events. Some are known for working with specific organizations, others for their deep commitment to raising money and making a difference. Kappa Sigma fraternity is not usually one of these.

In an effort to change its image, Kappa Sigma will be putting more effort than usual into their philanthropy event.

Kappa Sigma will sell Ted Drewes frozen custard in the DUC this week and pizza on the lot during ThurtenE teardown.

They’re not just raising money. They’re gathering funds to give to Habitat for Humanity’s St. Louis chapter, as well as donating their time later in May to build houses for three days.

“This is something new,” Kappa Sigma Philanthropy Chair Jon Kornblau said. “In the past, philanthropy has not been one of our strongest points, and we are really trying to improve on that and do something more impactful in the community.”

So far, 13 to 14 brothers have committed to staying after classes end to participate in this project. Each day, eight to 12 people will be donating about nine hours of their time to build a house in Old North St. Louis.

“We thought it would be a lot easier to get people to stay and do it if it were in St. Louis. It’s an easy way to engage our community,” former Philanthropy Chair Kurt Wall said. Wall said that this is an event he would like to see happen every year.

Next year, Wall hopes that the event will not only continue, but also expand to the community. Kappa Sig hopes to make the event during the year so that more people can participate, and perhaps open the event to non-Kappa Sig members.

Before choosing Habitat for Humanity, the brothers tossed around a few other ideas focused mostly on collaboration with other Greek groups and fundraising. In the end, they settled on something that would give them more of a hands-on experience in the field.

“It was something we think can really make a tangible difference, and we can see our results as opposed to just raising money for a cause and not seeing exactly how the money gets used,” Kornblau said.

The build will take place May 19, 21 and 22.

Holmes Lounge is a great example of a functional yet beautiful location on our campus. Comfortable chairs and ample seating make for an enjoyable place to spend an hour or two. Holmes looks like students actually use it. There’s a little wear and tear to the room that makes us feel at home. The old Bear’s Den had a similar function. It had a soul; it was part of the Wash. U. experience. It certainly wasn’t the prettiest building, but regardless, that was where students wanted to be. We are not prima donnas. If there is a scratch on the floor, that is okay. We’d rather have that than have students talk about going to “downtown South 40,” in a few years. This University is loosing that “soul” with every sterilized, faux-riche building that it plops down on campus. Colleges come with a history. Buildings, rooms and hallways should have stories that come with them. Freshmen should get to hear about what used to happen in their dorm over previous years.

With the fear of our campus turning into Disney World looming, we can only wonder what to expect in the future. Will we be able to touch the walls in the next building that gets built? We are not in college to be babied. A college campus should be vibrant and lively. There should be an infectious spirit that runs through the flyers and chalk drawings.

The University should be a place for the students who are there, not a façade to attract new students. Please stop disinfecting the school, please stop sterilizing our college lives as if the student body were a bunch of hypochondriacs. We can assure you that we’re not. And we want our school back.

Example two: It’s a furiously hectic 12:19 p.m. You and a friend, because God forbid you attempt this exercise with more than one other person, wait in an exhaustingly slow line for food. Crowds swarm around you, and you are growing impatient. As you and your friend exit the food line, you weave through herds of people to get some water. After being nearly knocked over three times, you search futilely for 20 minutes for a place to rest your weary bones and enjoy your meal. Sucks for you, though: There are no seats.

Which one sounds more familiar?

Lately, it seems as if Wash. U.’s student body has increased to the size of the University of Wisconsin’s. Either that, or wizards magically shrunk the campus over winter break. Either way, there is a problem. There are no seats at almost any location, the lines are long and slow, and venues frequently run out of food. And let me tell you this, if I don’t get that warm, giant chocolate chip cookie from the DUC café, I get cranky.

These complaints may seem selfish in the wake of tragedy, and I agree wholeheartedly. There are greater problems in the world, and student groups have addressed them in a variety of ways across the campus. In fact, the student response to the crisis in Haiti has been dramatic and inspiring—even today, a booth will be in the DUC throughout the afternoon to raise funds for the Haiti earthquake—so I see no reason to press the issue. Furthermore, if I were writing for The New York Times, I might be more prone to expand my journalistic horizons. But I’m not. I write for this school’s newspaper, and this happens to be a major problem across campus. With the extravagant tuition they pay, the students of this campus should not have to trudge from building to building looking for a place to eat lunch. I don’t know how the University would approach the seating problem, but the DUC, Holmes Lounge, Whispers, and even Hilltop Bakery are nearly unanimously seat-less during peak lunch hours.

When I see students eating outside in 25-degree weather, I know there’s a problem. We were not meant to be penguins. When I see friends huddled together on the half bench thing with the artsy-metallic-looking-swirl-design, it’s clear that the school has not done an adequate job creating table space in the DUC. It’s not only that there are no seats in the main dining room. The café is always full, as is the secret back room past the Career Center. How do people even know that room exists? I’m not whining about something irrelevant. While it may not be a global cause, a top-notch university, such as the one we attend, should have facilities large enough to support its student body. Call me crazy, but it’s a royal pain to have to cover three buildings as if you were in a Navy SEALs operation just to find a chair. Not only is it inconvenient, it’s embarrassing.

Questions that may arise during your trek for salvation: “Why has that kid walked around Whispers three times in the past 10 minutes?” Or, “Why is that kid carrying his food all over campus…Weirdo.” So if the practical aspect of more seating isn’t enough to spur this campus into widespread revolt, let my made up impressions of people judging your lame, seat-less self seal the deal. Good luck finding a table today! Wait…it’s Friday, and no one is on campus; never mind.