Sad to announce the
End of an era with Ruth,
It’s football season.

A look back at 10 years of enrichment, change and an iconic presence that many have come to associate with the quintessential qualities of Brown University:

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The new and improved Faunce is kind of obsess-worthy. The building looks really beautiful and there’s a great amount of comfortable space to do anything from studying to hanging out. The best part of the new Faunce though probably has to be the new Blue Room and all of it’s features.

The Blue Room now stays open until 9 pm, and you can use meal credits after 4 pm. For dinner, there’s sushi from Shanghai and dishes from Kabob and Curry. Let’s repeat that: you can use meal credits to get restaurant sushi and Indian food. In the morning, there are fresh bagels from Bagel Gourmet, which you can buy as always with points and declining balance. The focaccia sandwiches are delicious, and there’s a yogurt parfait station. The couches are comfortable, as are the booths. Also, it’s air conditioned, which is enough to make the Blue Room a sanctuary in this heat.

Plus, even President Simmons loves it: she was just spotted talking with people and enjoying lunch.

President Ruth Simmons has certainly been out and about on campus a lot this week.

To start off, her face has been plastered around campus on Brown Women’s Rugby Football Club flyers, advertising $2 raffle tickets through Friday to win a one-hour lunch with the president. For those without even $2 to spare, attendance at an entire team practice will suffice.

But even that price might be too steep for those residents of Barbour Hall that got to hang out with President Simmons for free, when she showed up as a surprise guest to the 2nd Barbour Family Style Potluck Feb. 8. Barbour’s Community Assistants invited the president to the first potluck last semester, but she was unable to come, Victoria Chen ’11, one of the CAs, wrote in an e-mail to The Herald. President Simmons stayed at the potluck for about half an hour, chatting with students about — what else? — the upcoming Super Bowl.

But while she has appeared on posters around campus and in residence halls, there is one place where President Simmons doesn’t seem to be on students’ minds. Despite rumors that students were listing the president as a crush, not a single e-mail from Prospect & Meeting, Brown’s new dating site, has been sent to either of President Simmons’ two Brown e-mail addresses, Assistant to the President Hanna Rodriguez-Farrar ’87 MA’90 PhD’09 wrote in an e-mail to The Herald (though she added that they may have been caught by a spam filter).

“Maybe everyone is just TALKING about putting her down as a prospect!” Rodriguez-Farrar wrote.

— Nicole Friedman