The Steps You've Been Shown

by John Mirisola ’11

Though Inauguration Day festivities wrapped up on the 16th, the Gordon College community wasn’t ready to stop celebrating. Friday evening, September 23, some five hundred students, faculty and staff joined President Lindsay and his wife, Rebecca, for the Inaugural Ball in the Bennett Athletic and Recreation Center.

Hosted by Gordon’s Campus Events Council (CEC), the ball was the student-run group’s biggest cross-campus event of the semester, and will remain one of the most well-attended gatherings of the 2011–2012 school year. “The events team did an amazing job,” said CEC director Jordan Tymann ’12. “Plus it helped that everybody was dressed up.”

Prior to the dance, around two hundred guests gathered in the Bennett Center lobby, which, by some ingenious sleights-of-hand, had been transformed into a bona fide reception hall. Over dessert and refreshments, guests heard from President Lindsay and from his Gordon College Student Association counterparts—President Ken Hallenbeck ’12 and Vice President Alice Anderson ’12.

With appetites for food and welcoming words sated, it was time for the main event. To ensure there could be no good reason for ballroom hesitance, CEC coordinated dance lessons with local instructors Linda and Stephen White. The couple, who also teach dancing as physical education at Gordon, showed guests how to salsa, waltz and swing, and those in attendance used the rest of the evening to show off what they had learned.

“Perhaps this activity will provide a blueprint for future weekend social gatherings for students,” said Rick Sweeney, vice president for marketing and strategic communications.

Indeed, as much as this event served to conclude the Inaugural celebration, it was a beginning in its own right—marking the start of a new year of events and entertainment on campus.

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