Editorial:
A semester rife with changes

This has not been a typical semester in any capacity. Just like this semester’s beginning, its ending reflects positive changes arriving hand-in-hand with the things that would try our fortitude as both students and a community.

Returning students were in awe of the new building’s grandeur and the near-completion of the Student Recreation Center (SRC), while new students were saved from the annoyances of full-scale construction. Among the new faces at Rider were six students who were forced to attend colleges elsewhere after Katrina’s devastating effects rendered their home universities wholly unsafe and nonfunctional.

While Rider tried to make things easier for the students who were dealing with the catastrophes that befell their home institutions, the Lawrenceville campus struggled to overcome its own close-to-home tragedy as a sophomore and her freshman brother were
killed while they made their way to the campus to move in for the year.

As the semester marched on, the state-of-the-art SRC opened its doors to the Rider community, offering us a new athletic facility while bestowing upon the campus a much-needed aesthetic improvement.

One change that hasn’t met with a unanimous round of applause from the student body was the modification made to the Rider logo. While we can’t undo the fact that the Tree of Knowledge is gradually being phased out of the University’s emblem, we found out that President Mordechai Rozanski has heard our collective voice and recognized that we deserve to have a say in what happens at our college.

As things were starting to peter out in some kind of stasis, Rider was once again thrown into a state of seemingly endless mourning, as both a senior and a junior were killed in car accidents within almost a week of each other. And now Rider has just lost a highly regarded faculty member, which doesn’t make the road to emotional recovery any easier for us.

In the wake of a semester that was intensely imbued with loss, we have learned how to come together in order to find solace in our companions and, as a result, we have reinforced the bonds that make Rider not only an academic community of students and faculty, but also a family.

We have strengthened our ties through means that were far more uplifting than the result of a tragic loss, though. The Lawenceville campus seems to be making the effort to connect to its sister campus in Princeton, thanks to President Rozanski’s great strides to make Rider University feel more like a united entity than a whole that comprises two vastly different parts.

Rider is reaching out to connect to the world beyond New Jersey, as well. On the heels of the initial success of the exchange program with Shanghai’s Sanda University, 30 new Sanda students will be arriving at this university for the Spring semester, in addition to the 20 who will be staying.

The ups and downs of this semester were, arguably, more drastic than they have been in recent memory. It is a testament to the Rider community that we have handled the lows with a grace that heralds the human spirit’s undeniable tenacity while celebrating the joys found in the good times.