The holiday season is officially underway after the lighting of Woodburn Hall for the first time in more than a decade.
“It symbolizes our community,” Adam James, construction manager for WVU Planning, Design and Construction, and project manager for the Woodburn Hall Lighting Project, said at the Tuesday event (Dec. 2) attended by hundreds of people on a December night in Morgantown with snow on the ground.
“It symbolizes the strength of WVU and all those who embody what it is to be a West Virginian.”
President Michael T. Benson called the lighting a “fantastic start to the holiday season.”
“Traditions persist and evolve — the word tradition itself derives from the Latin ‘tradere,’ meaning to transmit, to hand over, to give for safekeeping,” Benson told the crowd.
“Today, we hand over the tradition of the Woodburn Lighting to the newest generations of Mountaineers, providing the kind of moment that ties us all together.”
Sponsors for the Woodburn Lighting included The Huntington National Bank and Northeast Natural Energy.
“Like all families, we have traditions within the Mountaineer family and this one is among the brightest,” Benson said.