It’s the beginning of week five. By now, students have their chapel routines — or lack-there-of — cemented into their schedule. Today, the office of Spiritual Development made a big announcement: Instead of placing students on chapel probation, they will charge students’ accounts a fee of $375 if they do not make the minimum chapel attendance and makeup requirements. The kicker: It’s effective immediately.

To their credit, this new procedure replaces chapel probation, which limits students to 12 units the semester after two semesters in a row of failed requirements. Ideally, $375 is a lot cheaper than rearranging your academic planning, or so Spiritual Development proposes.

This long-debated decision does not come without much research and deliberation, assures Todd Pickett, dean of Spiritual Development. But what does this new financial enforcer communicate to students? Are we swinging toward legalism? Is this just the unavoidable means of institutionalized American academia? Should chapel requirement be loosened altogether, and what would that imply for our campus culture?

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