Now that some time has passed and Somerville's shiny new building actually has occupants, I think it's finally safe to tell a little story about one of the discussions that occurred during the long planning and building process. I wish I had remembered to bring this up on opening weekend, but a comment about something else entirely in an e-mail about completely unrelated things has reminded me of this.
When the 999-year lease on Somerville's new building was brought up a couple of years ago in a Governing Body meeting, a GB-member who shall remain nameless brought up---in all seriousness, at least as far as I could tell---what we should do when the lease expired. And then GB discussed it---in all seriousness, at least as far as I could tell---for the next 5 minutes. I'm pretty sure that I facepalmed, and I probably didn't do it only in my mind's eye. As I mumbled quietly for the benefit of the people sitting around me, "Why don't we leave some things for future generations to decide?" (I also mumbled comments along the lines of "I assume that my followers will have taken over the world by then." and "Are we so sure that the human race will still be around then?")
(In GB, we usually discuss more serious things, like the color of the couches in the Senior Common Room.)
Anyway, I just wanted to give you a little window into our "first-world problems". (I really like that phrase, by the way.)
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