The Hillsborough Hike will continue this week as a fundraiser for the senior class project to finish the Bell Tower.
Jay Dawkins, senior class president, said 10 percent of proceeds from sponsoring restaurants will be donated to the senior class.
“The big thing that we are working on this week is the Hike Continues,” Dawkins said.
“When students eat at sponsoring Hillsborough Street restaurants Tuesday through Friday, 10 percent of the proceeds go to finishing the Bell Tower for the senior class.”
Dawkins said the senior class has been actively continuing projects, such as finishing the Bell Tower and making progress with the new graduation gown design.
“This year we are trying to make the senior class council an active voice for the seniors,” Dawkins said. “We want to help them leave a legacy at N.C. State.”
One of the ways Dawkins said he had tried to keep the students informed was through a pre-recorded phone call reminding them of the deadline for class ring orders, similar to the Agromeck phone calls.
The other major project seniors are involved with, he said, is the new graduation gowns. Sarah Frye, a senior in civil engineering, said the change was welcome.
“I am excited about the prospect of red gowns,” Frye said. “Red is our signature color and a little more unique than black.”
The graduation gown idea, Dawkins said, is not new to the school.
“The conversation about red gowns started last year and made it to the chancellor’s desk but was not something that was moved forward,” Dawkins said. “Adam [Compton] brought it back up this fall, so the senior class and Student Government have been working to make it happen.”
Adam Compton, former senior class president and current Homecoming chair, said the process all began with a student asking a question.
“It started at the agro-life council meeting when we were doing this thing where we gave out candy bars in exchange for suggestions for improvement on campus,” Compton said. “One student asked us, ‘Why do we wear black gowns at graduation, why are they not red?'”
Compton said, as senior class president, he started talking to the bookstore and pushing harder to get the ball rolling.
“We started looking at different gowns and taking it to different student organizations,” Compton said. “We got an overwhelming response for the color red, so we continued to push forward. This past summer it looked like it would go all into place.”
According to Dawkins the first students to wear the red gowns will be the graduating class of spring 2010.
“The tough news is, in order to do it right, it will take time,” Dawkins said. “May graduates will be the first to wear red gowns to give the University time to put it together right.”
Compton said a major setback in the process was the change in administration over the summer.
“During the change of administration, the gowns were not a priority for the University at the time,” Compton said. “Then [Jim] Woodward was in place so we presented it to the chancellor and he said it sounded like a good idea and that he did not understand why we had not already done it.”
One of the goals, Compton said, was to create a gown that was unique to the University, like other schools who use their gowns as a branding opportunity.
“When you change the color of a gown you have to look at everything else,” Compton said. “What do you do with the honors students? What specific colors do we use for the sash? Do we drop the tassels from college-specific tassels?”
Dawkins said he was excited about the decision to uniform the color of tassels.
“Looking into the audience for years, it has been compartmentalized by different departments,” Dawkins said. “I think that we are really many different colleges in search of a University. This is one more step towards unifying N.C. State even if it is as simple as a tassel.”
