Vassar’s Board of Trustees voted to enact a plan to revamp Sanders Classroom—home to the offices of the English, Greek and Roman Studies and the Chinese and Japanese departments—in the spring of 2040. The plans for the building directly mimic the style of its neighbor Sanders Physics, set to have a statue of the current President of the College, Elizabeth Bradley. The building will become carbon-neutral, utilizing newly-installed solar panels on the building’s south side.
The decision was met with tepid reactions from the departments housed in the building, which, despite appreciating the upgrade in facilities, bemoaned the timeline. Professor Stephen Dedalus was one professor upset with the Trustees’ decision. “Tuition at Vassar will be—what—$150,000 by then? And they can’t find it in the budget until then. I smell something fishy.” Dedalus assures he will continue to complain about the situation as he goes on sabbatical next semester. “They will never hear the end of me.”
The renovation would come nearly a half-century after Sanders Physics’, a fact that did not go unnoticed by English major Drusilla Clack ’27. “They actually hate us; there is no other explanation. The College would rather build a bar, a restaurant and a hotel before giving a cent to us plebeians.” Clack went on to express dissatisfaction with the content of the plans themselves. “We don’t need more state-of-the-art computer labs in this building. At least I’ll literally be 35 when they break ground. Won’t be my problem.”
The statue planned for the building’s front lawn will resemble President Bradley walking while on her phone in the statue’s foreground. The background will depict a group of students trying to catch her on the device. As per campus tradition, the successful student winning a gift card to The Crafted Kup will be cast in bronze, nickel and tree sap.
The decision to memorialize this particular Vassar tradition was confusing to many. One comment on Vassar’s Instagram account, hidden by moderators, stated “Don’t you have anything else to celebrate?” Another user posted, “I’m so tired.” Sarah Krieg ’25, who once caught President Bradley on her phone, was confused as well. “Surely there is something else we could make the statue. Like let’s be serious?” It is unclear how deep Krieg’s displeasure runs, as her face was casted in plaster for the statue in late February.
The statue will not be designed and created by a single person, but rather an artist collective that goes by the name Broken Cookie. The Delaware-based group will employ non-traditional artistic practices to complete the work, including only completing work on the project every Leap Day. They will work for 24 hours each Feb. 29, one artist at a time. When a single artist becomes too tired to continue, they press a buzzer that releases a new artist into their studio. The installation date of 2040 is what initially interested the group enough to reach out to the College, offering their services free of charge. “This is a golden opportunity to experiment with the accepted temporalities of creation and collaboration,” shared the group’s non-hierarchical president, Olivia Rogers-Yost ’26.