Library director, university officials and project organizers put secrets exhibit back on schedule
Lauren Womack
Issue date: 11/18/09 Section: News
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Organizers and supporters of the project said the exhibit was not covered to hide Samford's "dirty laundry" or to protect the university from criticism but for many other reasons.
For starters, the exhibit was never on schedule to be open during Homecoming, University Library Director Kim Herndon said.
"According to our policy, you have an official start date when the exhibit can go up. We let Jonathan and Andrew go ahead and put it up at the beginning of the month, but the official start date was actually on Monday, Nov. 9," she said. Herndon said one of the reasons that the project's display date was set for the Monday after Homecoming was so that it did not distract from the "Live at the Library" event, which took place during that weekend.
"A lot of time is put in to Live at the Library," Herndon said. "We didn't want to take away from an event that we were already planning to hold here during Homecoming."
The SamfordSecret organizers, senior spanish major Andrew Crosson and senior interior design major Jonathan Haas, said that, although they would have liked to leave the exhibit up, they were willing to cover it for Homecoming weekend in order to ensure that it be displayed for the rest of the month.
"We just didn't want one parent or one donor coming up and saying 'I don't like this,'" Haas said. "I'm not saying that would have happened, but if it had, it would have completely ruined all of the work that we put in and the secrets that students submitted."
"Our biggest fear was that it would be taken down completely, then we would have nothing to show for it," Crosson said. "Everybody involved just decided that it would be best to offer a 'sneak peek' of the project, and then have it covered up during Homecoming."
Besides surface-level concerns, University Minister Matt Kerlin and SamfordSecret organizer Haas saw several other reasons to keep the project exclusive to current Samford students and faculty.
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