The Diana Center, named after Barnard's alumn, Diana Vagelos, has been open to student access since the beginning of the semester. However, this Wednesday the new student center was finally inaugurated in a ribbon-cutting ceremony where several notable people, including the Barnard College president Debora Spar and Diana Vagelos herself, delivered a few enthusiastic words about the new building.

"We could not be happier than we are today to open this building, to welcome you here, and to launch the start of the Diana Era here at Barnard College," the Barnard President said to welcome the crowd.

Although students have already been taking advantage of the Diana's facilities, the ceremony gave the administration an opportunity to express the hopes it has for the function of the building in the community.

Spar continued, "This building was designed and intended very much to be a nexus. To be a meeting point between the Barnard College community and the Columbia University community, it was designed to be a nexus between our college and the broader community and neighborhood of which we are a part, and it was designed perhaps most critically to be a nexus between student activities and the faculty and intellectual life of the college."

"It's as though the Diana takes bits and pieces of our campus, from the dining halls, to the classrooms, to the faculty offices, and puts them all in one place that is inevitably going to become the crossroads of the Barnard College campus in the years to come."

After the ceremony, the audience was invited to the theater on the bottom floor of the Diana for entertainment, raffles, hors d'oeuvres and hot cider. And even though the festivities for fro this week have concluded. The administration still has many other plans to celebrate the presence of the Diana on it's campus.

"We think the Diana Center personifies the forward-looking, cultural and global outlook of Barnard College. "

"The Diana Center is truly, as Deborah said, Barnard's nexus, where social, academic, cultural and community life will thrive and be strengthened. It is a building that one of our guests last night at a small dinner said, is worthy of our students."