Stu­dent Coun­cil Meets For First Time This Year

The newly elected mem­bers of this aca­d­e­mic year’s Bethel Stu­dent Coun­cil met for first time Sept. 21 at 9 p.m. The meet­ing took place in the Trustee Board Room on the fourth floor of the Aca­d­e­mic Cen­ter. 

Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil Pres­i­dent Ray Williams started the dis­cus­sions around a po­ten­tial “Be­cause I Care” on-cam­pus event. Ac­cord­ing to its web­site, Be­cause I Care is a na­tional cam­paign to spread aware­ness to col­lege stu­dents about the im­por­tance of vot­ing in lo­cal and na­tional elec­tions. Williams said Shawn Holt­gren, vice pres­i­dent for stu­dent de­vel­op­ment, en­cour­aged the coun­cil to co-host an on-cam­pus event with Be­cause I Care. 

“This gen­eral elec­tion is very im­por­tant, so we should work with this or­ga­ni­za­tion,” An­drew Mi­randa, vice pres­i­dent of the Up­per-Class Coun­cil, said. 

Some coun­cil mem­bers ques­tioned the tight time­line of set­ting up the po­ten­tial event. Williams said he did not re­ceive much in­for­ma­tion about the coun­cil’s role in co-host­ing the Be­cause I Care event. The only in­for­ma­tion known so far is that some coun­cil mem­bers would be talk­ing to stu­dents at ta­bles about vot­ing. 

The coun­cil de­cided to let Holt­gren know that they agree to co-host the Be­cause I Care event. The next step is to set up a date for the event. 

The up­per- and un­der-class­men also gave up­dates about what each group dis­cussed at their re­spec­tive meet­ings. 

“We talked about the se­nior gift,” Han­nah Dar­ling, pres­i­dent of the Up­per-Class Coun­cil, said. “We con­sid­ered up­dat­ing the grill and pa­tio space by Founders.” 

The up­per­class­men coun­cil also dis­cussed the up­per­class­men for­mal dance. They looked into the bud­get they have for host­ing the event and set a tar­get date for late March or early April. They are look­ing to con­tact a rental com­pany. 

Ash­leigh Neier, Pres­i­dent of the Un­der-Class Coun­cil, said the un­der­class­men dis­cussed the an­nual can food drive oc­cur­ring Nov. 2 through Nov. 13. The event will again be a dorm ver­sus dorm event, where the dorm with the high­est do­na­tion of canned food wins a prize. Neier said they want to make an­nounce­ments about the food drive over Beth­i­cal News and through chapel an­nounce­ments. 

The coun­cil meet­ing then turned its dis­cus­sion to house clean­ing mat­ters in­clud­ing bud­gets and con­sti­tu­tion by­laws. Williams asked the en­tire coun­cil if they should con­sider chang­ing any of the by­lines to the coun­cil’s con­sti­tu­tion. The coun­cil de­cided to table the dis­cus­sion so coun­cil mem­bers have time to look over all of the by­lines be­fore propos­ing any changes. 

The coun­cil voted to ap­prove the bud­get for the 2020-21 fis­cal year, but ques­tions were raised about the amount of money be­ing al­lo­cated to each smaller com­mit­tee. 

“Why was $100 moved from both the up­per- and un­der-class bud­gets?” Dar­ling said. 

Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil Trea­surer Skyler French said the up­per- and un­der-class­men have $100 less in their bud­get this year be­cause they did not spend of all of the bud­get last year. He also af­firmed that there is money in the dis­cre­tionary bud­get. 

The coun­cil ad­dressed ini­tia­tives to up­date the coun­cil’s on­line pres­ence. Some ini­tia­tives to im­prove their on­line pres­ence in­cludes up­dat­ing the web­site and run­ning a so­cial me­dia strat­egy. 

While the coun­cil wants to flesh out the de­tails for build­ing a bet­ter web­site and im­prov­ing their so­cial me­dia, fur­ther steps of ap­proval are needed. Jim Ben­nett, stu­dent coun­cil ad­vi­sor and ed­u­ca­tion de­part­ment chair, said the Of­fice of Mar­ket­ing and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions needs to ap­prove the coun­cil’s so­cial me­dia ef­forts. Ben­nett said he would email Lissa Diaz, Di­rec­tor of Mar­ket­ing and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, about as­sist­ing with up­dates to the web­site.