This past Friday, the University community gathered on the Great Lawn for a campuswide dinner designed to, according to Senior Vice President for Students and Enrollment Andrew Flagel, “teach about the sanctification of time” and the diversity of the campus. While the nature of the dinner was well intended, this board urges future similar events to be better publicized and explained beforehand.

  According to an email sent to the student body on Aug. 28 by Flagel, the event was created to explore the University’s “Jewish roots, the wonderful tradition of Friday evening Shabbat dinners, and the wonderful tapestry of cultures and observances that make up our incredibly diverse Brandeis community.” 

   It is commendable to unite the community as a whole and consider what makes the University unique, but the timing of the email was poor; it was sent out a day before the event itself. 

   An event intended to affect the entire University population should not be publicized to the student body merely 24 hours before it is scheduled to begin. Although it appeared in the Orientation Pocket Guide, many upperclassmen were unaware of the dinner’s existence before the Aug. 28th email and few people, if anyone, were aware that all dining halls would be closed for the evening. 

  Some students later discovered that the Hoot Market and other locations were open during the dinner, a fact that should have been mentioned in the original email—not only on a follow-up post on the Brandeis University Senate Dining Committee’s Facebook page. 

The University has a responsibility to better inform its student body of events that affect them and to fully notify its students of the details with an easily accessible, clear and consistent message.

  Though the planning of any large event likely undergoes tinkering even until the last minute, this does not excuse leaving the intended audience uninformed of the event’s existence. The delayed sending of an email created confusion that could have easily been avoided by informing the community at an earlier date. 

  This board hopes the University will keep its students better informed moving forward so that commendable events like this one will be better executed.