The news was received with a roar of applause and much excitement. We are to have a College Commons, a social space reserved for Year One and Year Two students. The Commons has not yet opened, though, and that is because it still awaits a large amount of planning and organization.

Why not just open the Commons and wing it? As Ms. Powell, advisor to the College Commons initiative, says, "We want to do it right." This Commons is to be run and used primarily by our current Year Ones and Year Twos, but this project is being built to succeed our generation, to carry forth.

Ms. Powell has been developing plans with the Student Union thus far, discussing ideas for the project with the representatives with whom she has diligently worked with for many months. There are numerous thoughts being tossed about, but until a formal board of college students forms, nothing can be set in stone. And yet, as an idea it is quickly gaining substance.

The idea of having a Commons is not new; in fact, two previous Commons have been attempted in the past. However, while both the need and the excitement were there, the means were unavailable. It has mostly been an issue of unused space, since our school is not equipped with an excess of classrooms. Even, our faculty acted as our advocates, making it clear that the college students had the motivation and the self-control to handle a space unto them. While the idea of a College Commons seems to come up annually, it finally left the drawing board this fall.

At the beginning of the year, Dean Brutsaert was able to carve a room out for the College Commons—"a big deal," Principal Lerner mentions. He entrusted Ms. Powell to adopt the project and see it to fulfillment and suggested that she work with the students. Ms. Powell knew she could get the Student Union on board.

As it stands, the first step toward making the Commons a reality, is to convene a board that will organize and maintain it. To this end Ms. Powell involved the Student Union because it is the largest committed and cohesive representative body of students at our school. After the Student Union's major success in realizing their plans and ideas for community day, and working with them on the sixteen other projects that they had undertaken, she quickly started brainstorming with them.

Until a board of students does convene (hopefully by mid-October) the plans for the Commons shall remain ambiguous, but suggestions have included bringing in comfortable furniture, how to fundraise the money for such an acquisition, where to move the course "World Drumming" which currently meets in the sought after 209, the last big kink they face, and whether light snacking can occur, provided that there is plan in place by which the students can maintain a clean environment. "There's a real challenge here to make this work," Principal Lerner promises, "but we want it to succeed." When we first came to BHSEC in 9th grade, Mr. Peterson told us that we were going to be treated like adults and that we’d better maintain that respect. In the College Commons is this trust in material form and we must live up to the promise that we made as 9th graders and earn this privilege.