Nut­shell: “What is your opin­ion on the new mu­sic pol­icy for the ath­letic fa­cil­i­ties?”

MISHAWAKA—Wel­come back to the Nut­shell! Each week, the Bea­con staff poses a ques­tion to you, the Bethel stu­dent body, and pub­lishes your an­swers.  

On Jan. 24, the Ath­letic De­part­ment an­nounced a new mu­sic pol­icy for the ath­letic fa­cil­i­ties, specif­i­cally that pub­licly broad­cast­ing any mu­sic is pro­hib­ited. Ath­letes must now use per­sonal lis­ten­ing de­vices such as head­phones to lis­ten to mu­sic while us­ing the fa­cil­i­ties.  

This week, we asked you: What is your opin­ion on the new mu­sic pol­icy for the ath­letic fa­cil­i­ties? 

Cas­san­dra Shu­pert – Ju­nior Math Ed­u­ca­tion and Youth Min­istry dou­ble ma­jor, “I think it’s a very good thing, be­cause be­fore there was some very bad mu­sic be­ing played and it was­n’t be­ing mon­i­tored, so I think that if that’s how it had to go about to get it to stop then I think it’s a good idea.” 

Car­son Bolinger – Fresh­man Psy­chol­ogy Ma­jor, “I think it’s re­spon­si­ble, but I think it also lim­its the stu­dents here, maybe a lit­tle too over the top; I mean, ob­vi­ously we need re­stric­tions, but I feel like tak­ing all of it away is prob­a­bly not the best de­ci­sion.”  

Tony Na­tali – Head Track Coach, “I think that any­thing that we can do over here that en­hances our to­tal mis­sion with the col­lege and to­tal mis­sion with what we’re about is some­thing that’s pos­i­tive.”  

Dim­itri Tay­lor – Fresh­man ASL In­ter­pre­ta­tion Ma­jor, “I would say that’s pretty rea­son­able con­sid­er­ing that you have mul­ti­ple peo­ple lis­ten­ing to mu­sic out loud, and I think that’s kind of dis­tract­ing I guess.” 

An­nelotte Letens – Se­nior Busi­ness Ad­min­is­tra­tion Ma­jor, “I see where it’s com­ing from be­cause it can be a prob­lem when it’s five o’­clock and that’s, I think, peak hour, like every­one’s there, and so I’ve seen it where peo­ple have had their mu­sic play­ing over speak­ers, and every­one else has head­phones in, and then you hear their mu­sic over it, so it can be a prob­lem; but I think it’s hard to gen­er­al­ize the so­lu­tion, you know, be­cause if it’s nine o’­clock in the evening and no one’s there, I don’t see why it would be a prob­lem for me to play my mu­sic out loud. But I don’t know; I think it’s more like some­thing that should be an un­writ­ten rule, just like ‘Hey, this is good be­hav­ior to just kind of be kind to your neigh­bor,’ you know, and not to play mu­sic out loud if some­one else is lis­ten­ing to dif­fer­ent mu­sic. But if no one else is around or you can ask that per­son, ‘Hey, do you mind if I play mu­sic?’ So, I think it’s just more good man­ners than it should re­ally be a rule.” 

Evan Herr-Knis­pel – Se­nior Ex­er­cise Sci­ence Ma­jor, “Well, I’m not sure that I en­tirely agree with it; I think peo­ple should be able to use their speak­ers and lis­ten to what they want to within rea­son, as long as it’s not too loud and ob­nox­ious and dis­turb­ing peo­ple, but if, I don’t know, I think peo­ple should be able to lis­ten to mu­sic on speak­ers as long as it’s not in­ter­fer­ing with what other peo­ple are do­ing.” 

Corbin Alexan­der – Fresh­man Crim­i­nal Jus­tice Ma­jor, “I use a speaker, I don’t use head­phones ever, so that’s kind of a bum­mer, you know, I’ve got a huge speaker I brought, so I’m kind of against the whole head­phones thing only. But you got to do what the peo­ple say you got to do, you got to obey the rules.” 

Na­talia John­son – Ju­nior Bi­ol­ogy Ma­jor, “I think it’s a good pol­icy be­cause I know some peo­ple will play crazy mu­sic, but I also know that if I’m work­ing out in there it can be a prob­lem be­cause I don’t like it when my head­phones get in the way, and then I pull my head­phones off and then my phone’s on the tread­mill. So, when you’re do­ing hard work­outs, it’s a prob­lem, but I un­der­stand the need to be re­spect­ful.” 

Jes­sica Du­vall – Ju­nior Busi­ness Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Lib­eral Stud­ies dou­ble ma­jor, “I un­der­stand the pol­icy, like why they did it, but I think that it’s nice for when our team goes in there to do the stair-climber work­out, that we can play over our speaker and have it out for every­one to hear rather than be­ing in­di­vid­ual.”