Acorn

Media Credit: Caitlin Gallagher Seniors Heather Parrish and Sarah Winer play a game of checkers, while junior Buist Bickley looks on and enjoys some food in TOE's new location in the President's House Annex. [Click to enlarge]

Half-empty boxes crammed with knick-knacks and old newspapers filled the President�s House Annex Wednesday. Four employees of The Other End Coffeehouse and Cabaret worked to unpack the load and clean up the Annex in time for TOE�s reopening the next day. �We�re more ready than we look. Once the boxes get out of here and the food gets here, we�ll be ready,� junior and special events manager for TOE Georgia Fowler said.

And ready they were. TOE successfully opened last night, to a crowd of students. People were happy to eat their quesadillas and see the quirky items coating the walls and making TOE a unique place for late-night and socializing. But where were the concrete walls, the bathroom door that doesn�t lock and the pipes on the ceiling?

For the spring semester TOE, relocated to the President�s House Annex (the white building connected to the President�s House next to the garage door). Sitterly House � where TOE was located for 20 years � is being renovated, so TOE had to find an alternative location.

�We never thought getting the Annex was a possibility,� senior and general manager of TOE Regine Riviere said. TOE�s adviser, Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts Andrew Elliott, told them the Annex was available. �It�s smaller, but it still has a homey feeling,� Riviere said.

Along with being homey, another thing the Annex has in common with the Sitterly House�s basement is that it is not handicap accessible, a fact that makes TOE unable to advertise on Drew�s campus. But, that issue is being handled. �They are renovating and making it [Sitterly] handicap accessible,� Riviere said.

So what have the employees of TOE been doing until now? They have spent this semester moving TOE�s items out of the Commons Theatre and having weekly Monday meetings. The move has been slow, according to Riviere, but Facilities has provided help. The English department has also been helping out, since it will move its offices into Sitterly after the renovations are completed. But even with the help, the TOE staffers are happy to have opened this weekend.

�We definitely wanted to open this weekend. I have been getting lots of emails and calls from people asking when we were opening and if we were opening,� Riviere said.

And for the most part, all of the staff will be back. �They�ve been pretty excited to come back and work with us,� she said.

But along with TOE�s new location, the entertainment at TOE may be a little different. Typically, TOE has bands perform Friday and Saturday nights, but now the performance will have to be �more acoustic stuff because the Chief [Evans] lives right there and it�s residential,� Riviere said.

TOE is still the same loveable place though, and it will have its regular hours of Thursdays and Sundays 8 p.m. to 1 a.m. and Fridays and Saturdays 9 p.m. to 2 a.m.

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