Meet the Ben­netts

MISHAWAKA—Meet Johnny (’17) and An­nie (’16) Ben­nett, Bethel grad­u­ates and a re­cently mar­ried cou­ple who have come back to Sailor and the dorms they each served in as RAs, to be the new Res­i­dent Di­rec­tors.

An­nie grad­u­ated in 2016 with a de­gree in So­ci­ol­ogy and TESOL and has since been teach­ing and work­ing in the class­room as well as oc­ca­sion­ally help­ing at the Din­ing Com­mons.

Af­ter grad­u­at­ing with a Vo­cal Per­for­mance de­gree in 2017, Johnny has been work­ing full time in Or­lando and, more re­cently, back home in Elkhart. In ad­di­tion to meet­ing at Bethel, they both en­joyed their time as stu­dents here and are ea­ger to give back. Dorm life, stu­dent groups, and in­tra­mu­rals were some of An­nie’s fa­vorite things on cam­pus.

For Johnny, it was in­tra­mu­rals. As an avid lover of sports and com­pe­ti­tion, he is ex­cited for his sec­ondary role as the new Di­rec­tor of In­tra­mu­rals. An­nie also has a sec­ond role on cam­pus. She is help­ing with com­mu­ni­ca­tions, es­pe­cially with Stu­dent Life and the stu­dent body to be aware of the many events on cam­pus. She is also in charge of the an­nounce­ments on the TVs around cam­pus.* She is even ea­ger to try to re­form a stu­dent group ded­i­cated to fel­low chil­dren of mis­sion­ar­ies.

In An­nie’s words, the pur­pose of the group is “So that dif­fer­ent stu­dents who are mis­sion­ary kids feel like they have a place where peo­ple un­der­stand them, and they can go to and have an added group of friends.” In their down­time, both like to oc­ca­sion­ally sneak an episode or two of their fa­vorite shows in.

As a cou­ple, they are fond of watch­ing The Of­fice and The Walk­ing Dead, but on their own time, their tastes di­verge. An­nie’s guilty plea­sure show is Jane the Vir­gin; on the other hand, Johnny can some­times be found not-so-guiltily watch­ing One Tree Hill.

There are many things both have missed about cam­pus and are look­ing for­ward to jump­ing back into. Top­ping John­ny’s list is the Oak­wood-Manges game in which Manges has lost for six straight years, and Dude Week, a time when the male dorms fo­cus on grow­ing in com­mu­nity with the other men on cam­pus and of­ten ab­stain from tech­nol­ogy. An­nie is ex­cited to be able to go to sport­ing events and the­ater shows.

The Ben­net­t’s, both in­di­vid­u­ally and as a cou­ple, are tremen­dously ex­cited to serve in their new roles as the res­i­dent di­rec­tor for Sailor Hall. If you see them on cam­pus, in­tro­duce your­self and wel­come them back to Bethel! 

*Ed­i­tor's note: The an­nounce­ments on the TVs around cam­pus are man­aged by the uni­ver­si­ty's Mar­ket­ing and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions De­part­ment, not by An­nie. We re­gret this er­ror.