Stu­dent Coun­cil Dis­cusses New Park­ing Lot Cam­eras

The Bethel stu­dent coun­cil dis­cussed the pos­si­bil­ity of in­stalling new cam­eras in the cam­puss park­ing lots. The dis­cus­sion took place in their Oct. 5 meet­ing at 9 p.m. 

Ac­cord­ing to Stu­dent Coun­cil Pres­i­dent Ray Williams, the idea is sup­ported by both stu­dent life and cam­pus safety. 

“We’re prob­a­bly go­ing to put out a sur­vey for this,” Williams said. “But we’re think­ing about charg­ing about $5 a park­ing ticket, so we can get cam­eras out in the park­ing lots. This will re­lieve the huge cost of get­ting that down on the school.” 

Cur­rently, stu­dents do not need to pay a fee in or­der to park in any of the cam­pus park­ing lots. Williams said he still needs to speak with Bethel Chief Fi­nan­cial Of­fi­cer Jerry White about the idea. 

The rec­om­men­da­tion for the idea will be go­ing to the Bethel ad­min­is­tra­tion to get a feel for what they think about the idea. Williams said they will most likely ap­prove of the idea. 

“This is some­thing we’ll prob­a­bly get more on the ground in the spring se­mes­ter,” Williams said. 

The coun­cil is also look­ing to help re­in­state the cam­pus safety am­bas­sador pro­gram. The pro­gram was de­signed to pro­vide stu­dent in­tern­ships with cam­pus safety that of­fered a wage. 

But in­stead of a paid in­tern­ship set-up, the pro­gram will likely take the form of a un­paid vol­un­teer ba­sis.  

“It will look very good on a re­sume, but at the same time, it will help make sure the cam­pus is safe,” Williams said. 

The stu­dent coun­cil ex­ec­u­tives will also be host­ing a Christ­mas party, nick­named “Thanks­mas,” on Nov. 12. The Din­ing Com­mons staff will be work­ing with the coun­cil to plan a thanks­giv­ing feast. 

Williams also said the coun­cil could talk to cam­pus ac­tiv­i­ties about in­clud­ing games and ac­tiv­i­ties at the din­ner. 

Se­nior Han­nah Dar­ling, pres­i­dent of up­per-class coun­cil, said the up­per­class­men dis­cussed the up­com­ing se­nior event. She is cur­rently in con­tact with the own­ers of The Brick, a pri­vate event ware­house and bar lo­cated in South Bend, about host­ing the event. 

“I talked to them about a date that we like: Feb­ru­ary 21st,” Dar­ling said. “Be­cause this is be­fore spring break, but also kind of a spot…where there’s not a lot of sports con­flicts.” 

The up­per-class coun­cil are look­ing into the pos­si­bil­ity of hav­ing dance in­struc­tors at the event. Dar­ling said they are also fig­ur­ing out the pay­ments in­cluded in hir­ing a caterer. 

The un­der-class coun­cil is still plan­ning for the up­com­ing canned food drive tak­ing place Nov. 2 to 13. The coun­cil de­cided the win­ning dorm will re­ceive a $100 prize for col­lect­ing the most canned goods. 

“We’re work­ing on the posters and we’re work­ing to try and use the church that do­nated to [the drive] last year,” Ash­leigh Neier, pres­i­dent of the un­der-class coun­cil, said. 

The un­der-class coun­cil also worked on up­dat­ing the stu­dent coun­cil web­site. While more up­dates are still needed, Neier said some changes are al­ready no­tice­able. 

The un­der­class­men mem­bers also es­tab­lished a new email ad­dress for the stu­dent coun­cil as a whole: stu­dent­coun­cil@bethelu­ni­ver­sity.edu. Neier said they are con­sid­er­ing cre­at­ing an In­sta­gram ac­count for the coun­cil as well. 

“I did­n’t know that we had a web­site un­til…right now,” Stu­dent Coun­cil Mem­ber Ja­cob Falk said. “I feel like the In­sta­gram would be a great as­s­est to you guys to get out [the word] to stu­dents.” 

Williams also talked about the idea of turn­ing the soon-to-be empty room at The Acorn into a stu­dent lounge. The lounge would be used to host the bi-weekly stu­dent coun­cil meet­ings.  

He will be meet­ing with White and Shawn Holt­gren, Bethel vice pres­i­dent of stu­dent de­vel­op­ment, to dis­cuss the idea. 

“I was think­ing about ded­i­cat­ing it to­wards one of our fac­ulty mem­bers who has given a lot of time to­wards stu­dent coun­cil, Dr. [David] Schmidt,” Williams said.