Forget about making New Year’s Eve plans this year – nothing that you come up with is going to top the excitement that President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration will bring to D.C. on Jan. 20. But along with the impending celebartions also comes the logistics nightmare of Inauguration 2009.

GW is hard at work preparing for the uncertainty of dealing with the flocks of visitors that will inevitably descend on Foggy Bottom. Among these preparations is the creation of an inauguration Web site to help communicate vital information to the GW community. As the Hatchet’s editorial board argued on Dec. 8, such a site has plenty of potential to make inauguration day go smoothly for students.

The site is a good start in that it provides the basic times and dates of GW-sponsored inauguration events, but it is far from living up to its aforementioned potential. Instead of succinctly giving us the crucial information we need to make the most of Jan. 20, we get links to sites with even more links, such as the Campus Advisories page.

Simply consolidating the information that is relevant to GW students on the newly created Web site could make it so much more effective. It is understandable that administrators and authorities may not have all the answers yet, but addressing such questions as “Do we need to stock up on a few extra groceries that week?” and “Will I be allowed to camp out the night before the inauguration?” would be helpful to say the least.

GW already has the Web site in place – now there is no excuse not to make it as useful as possible.