Merry & Bright

 Last night, the inside of the library at Roger Williams Uni­versity was packed with stu­dents preparing for finals, but the outside was crowded with those attending this year's Win­ter Illumination celebration.

People of all ages braved the rain to see part of the univer­sity light up for this ninth an­nual celebration of the holiday season. Although this event has become a tradition, it is also continually evolving.

"For Winter Illumination this year, I decided to change things up a bit and move it to the quad area, which included the ever-famous Roger statue," Lilly Naqvi, the chair of the event, said.

Every year ,the amount and placement of lights must be de­cided upon. The trend has been to slowly make the event more and more of a seasonal holiday celebration, one that is also en­vironmentally friendly.

"We really try to make it non-denominational," Shannon Fa­hey, a committee member from the group of Student Senate students who helped plan the event, said. "It's really just a cel­ebration of lights."

"Instead of decorating a Christmas-type tree, we've dec­orated the three regular trees," Scott Yonan, the Assistant to Vice President of Student Af­fairs and Director of Special Projects, said of the fact that the lights are on the trees outside the library this year instead of a pine in the quad.

RWU has a reputation for be­ing an environmentally friendly school, and Winter Illumina­tion did not always support this.

At one point early on in its history, this event saw the illu­mination of the usual pine tree, the east side of the architecture building, the west side of the Commons, part of the library, and the administration build­ing. In addition to that the fact that the tree used seem to be very tied to Christmas, which made those who do not cele­brate that holiday feel excluded, the other lights created an ex­treme use of electricity.

"[The buildings] were lit up like crazy," Yonan said of past years. "It was beautiful, but we're trying to be a green cam­pus. We want to be as green as possible, and still have an illu­mination.

"It doesn't make sense to be using all that electricity, not to mention it was very expensive," Yonan said.

However, the move also had to do with aesthetics.

"We moved the location be­cause we felt that the quad just did not give the same effect that we were looking for," Fahey said. "We're just trying to make it bigger this year."

"We originally wanted to get a huge tree to put in the quad, but it was tough to find one in Rhode Island at the size we needed," Naqvi said.

This year, a bake sale was held to raise money for the Women's Resource Center of Bristol & Newport Counties, who re­ceives the proceeds from the Winter Illumination annually. This fundraiser was much more successful than those from pre­vious years.

"We added some new fund­raising ideas, like decorating your own ornament and raffling off a Samsung tablet, which seemed to be a hit," Naqvi said.

Everything turned out well despite the rain. People ate gin­gerbread men and women and drank hot chocolate while the a cappella group Special Deliv­ery sang holiday music. A check was presented to the Women's Resource Center of Bristol & Newport Counties. Then President Donald Farish said a few words, and conducted the countdown before the illumina­tion.

"We're fighting back against the night by illuminating the skies," Farish said.

Putting tradition aside, Presi­dent Farish handed off the job of plugging in the lights to someone else.

"As we know, rain and electric­ity don't mix," Farish said.

The lights turned on without a hitch, however, and the crowd was pleased.

"We started to set up the lights a week in advance, and people started to plug in the lights around the library pillars just because they looked nice!" Naqvi said.

"I always enjoy Winter Illu­minations," Fahey said. "I think it's an exciting event. Everyone's always in a really good mood."

The day before the event, Yo­nan said, "It looks like no mat­ter what, we're probably going to be out there doing a count­down."

He was right.