Graduation day is close. And students are thinking of ways their families can pick them out of the massive crowd of graduates before they shake President Gary Ransdell’s hand.

Every grad is unique. Graduation caps, or mortarboards, can reflect that easily.

Six years ago on May 4, Pellville freshman Melissa “Katie” Autry partied at a Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity end-of-the-semester celebration. Less than 24 hours later, Autry was at Vanderbilt Hospital in Nashville, Tenn., after a fire in her Poland Hall room. Autry was raped, doused with hairspray and burned in her room the week before finals.

A plethora of senior artwork is being showcased in the Kentucky Library and Museum until May 17. Gallery director Kristina Arnold said that of the 40 art department graduates, 30 are participating in the exhibition.

The art department has always had a senior exhibition, although it has taken different forms every year, she said.

Thursday night, students will have the chance to expose themselves to the fine arts.

“An Evening of Dance” has been an annual tradition since the late 1980s, Department Head Scott Stroot said. The dance recital begins tonight and runs until May 5 at 8 p.m.

Students from the theatre and dance department will wrap up their student show series with Edward Albee’s “The Zoo Story” and Lisa Mayo, Gloria and Muriel Miguel’s “Reverb-ber-ber-rations” at 8 p.m. Monday and Tuesday in Gordon Wilson Hall Lab Theatre.

“The Zoo Story” is directed by Erin Person, a senior from Franklin, Tenn.

On the top floor of the fine arts center lives the art department. Each classroom, gallery and office is unique, but some stand out more than others.

Inside associate art professor Jeff Jensen’s office, several rows of different football helmets make their presence known immediately.

Versailles senior Paul Bradley was hurriedly putting a skirt on in the women’s restroom of Gordon Wilson Hall Saturday night.

As he struggled into white fishnet stockings, Brown Sugar, as he was known that night, explained that he participates in Alpha Psi Omega’s annual “Gender Bender” because the money raised goes to scholarships.

Saturday, Western students in the Invisible Children chapter will be abducted in Nashville. They won’t be alone. Students will congregate in 100 different cities in nine countries to abduct themselves in remembrance of kidnapped child soldiers who are forced to fight in the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda.

Though the Bowling Green Hot Rods lost Saturday, Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity hit the ball out of the park, winning a different game for a different cause.

Nashville freshmen Tate Goins and Russ Pappas had different ideas on the monetary value of the Centennial statue on the mall by the Downing University Center.

“Two thousand dollars,” Goins guessed, while Pappas estimated the red statue at $15,000. “Centennial,” sculpted by Gino Miles and unveiled in 2006, cost Western $42,000, according to information collected by Deborah Wilkins, the chief of staff and general counsel.