Let­ter from the Ed­i­tor

Greet­ings friends, 

Some­times, it’s dif­fi­cult to know what to write about. I love Bethel and have been grate­ful to spend six years of my aca­d­e­mic jour­ney here, be­gin­ning with REACH classes in high school and con­tin­u­ing through for four full years of un­der­grad­u­ate ed­u­ca­tion. So many amaz­ing peo­ple have poured into me, and I’ve been ex­cited to seek out op­por­tu­ni­ties to pour back into the com­mu­nity. It's been awe­some to as­sist with de­vel­op­ing the es­ports team, the Writ­ing Cen­ter and the Bea­con, and I’ve loved par­tic­i­pat­ing in ex­tracur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties like Stu­dents for Life, the Psy­chol­ogy Club, Econ Book Club, cam­pus events and a cou­ple of the­atre de­part­ment events.  

There is so much to do for stu­dents who are will­ing to look for ways to be in­volved, but it is true some stu­dents have to seek out that in­volve­ment more than oth­ers. Cur­rently, I’m think­ing of the com­muter com­mu­nity, which I am thank­ful to be a part of. As a gen­eral rule, com­muters have a more dif­fi­cult time find­ing ways to in­te­grate be­cause they are of­ten ab­sent from cam­pus in the evenings when events take place, they typ­i­cally work one or more off-cam­pus jobs and they usu­ally have other lo­cal so­cial cir­cles (such as church or high school friends) al­ready es­tab­lished. While it is won­der­ful to main­tain a healthy life out­side of the “Bethel bub­ble,” this can also cre­ate a sense of dis­con­nect­ed­ness that com­muters don’t al­ways know how to over­come, and this dif­fi­culty has been, un­for­tu­nately, in­creased this se­mes­ter by re­mov­ing the Com­muter Bible Study as an op­tion for stu­dents. 

I have no doubt the de­ci­sion to re­move Com­muter Bible Study was mo­ti­vated by good in­ten­tions. In fact, I spoke with As­so­ci­ate Di­rec­tor for Com­mu­nity Life Tom Car­pen­ter about the de­ci­sion, and he in­di­cated the rea­son­ing by Stu­dent Life staff cen­tered around a de­sire to in­crease com­muter in­ter­ac­tion with groups of stu­dents and staff they may not en­counter oth­er­wise and to cre­ate more va­ri­ety in the mid­week ex­pe­ri­ences com­muters par­tic­i­pate in.  

I could po­ten­tially un­der­stand this rea­son­ing if it had been ap­plied to all Bethel stu­dents in­stead of only the com­muters, but the res­i­den­tial hall stud­ies have been al­lowed to re­main as a mid­week op­tion. While I think it is great to en­cour­age the ca­ma­raderie and con­nect­ed­ness that might be cul­ti­vated by bring­ing mem­bers of in­di­vid­ual dorms to­gether, I do not un­der­stand why this same ca­ma­raderie and con­nect­ed­ness has been re­moved for com­muter stu­dents. The Bethel de­mo­graphic with the small­est amount of con­ve­nient op­por­tu­ni­ties to con­nect has had one of those op­tions stripped away from them. 

The study was well-at­tended and was one of the most eth­ni­cally and re­li­giously di­verse mid­week groups on cam­pus. It al­lowed a space for stu­dents to dis­cuss ques­tions they may not have con­sid­ered in any other set­ting. And it has caused those stu­dents who faith­fully at­tended the study to ex­pe­ri­ence frus­tra­tion, not only be­cause they had to find a new group to at­tend, but pri­mar­ily be­cause it elim­i­nated a space where the unique needs of com­muters could be met. For ex­am­ple, there have been stu­dents in the past who faced un­ex­pected trans­porta­tion dif­fi­cul­ties, and it was be­cause of ask­ing for prayer in Com­muter Bible Study that fel­low com­muters were able to step for­ward and meet those needs. 

Com­muters make up about one-third of the stu­dent body, so it is im­por­tant for Bethel to rec­og­nize the dif­fi­cul­ties com­muters face and for the uni­ver­sity to help over­come the ob­sta­cles to con­nect­ed­ness as much as pos­si­ble. In­stead, this de­ci­sion has cre­ated an ad­di­tional ob­sta­cle. 

I want to un­der­line this let­ter by say­ing, again, I firmly be­lieve this de­ci­sion was made with the best of in­ten­tions. How­ever, now that the is­sues the de­ci­sion cre­ates have been brought to light, I hope the value of Com­muter Bible Study will be re­al­ized and that it will be re­in­stated. Per­haps this re­in­state­ment can­not hap­pen un­til next se­mes­ter, but I hope iden­ti­fy­ing the im­por­tance of the study will pre­vent it from be­ing un­nec­es­sar­ily taken away again in the fu­ture. 

Thought­fully, 

Bri­anna Rae Dens­more 

Man­ag­ing Ed­i­tor