With groups like the cheese club, the adventure club and even a posse of hide-and-seek players, you might think that Biola’s student body had all the bases covered. But let’s not forget one thing Biola was missing: a facial hair club.

“It’s very biblical,” Clarke Andros, a junior biblical studies major and one of the five founders of the Biola Beardsmen, said about facial hair.

Eric Cole, a junior marketing management major, said that he and Andros got the idea for the club after watching the show “Whisker Wars,” which follows the competitors on Beard Team USA. They finished the last episode, looked at each other and had an instant beard connection — a term coined by Andros.

Friends since freshman year, Andros and Cole both have had some sort of facial hair for the past two and a half years.

Sophomores Jon Boone and Cody Laliberte and junior Chad Duarte make up the rest of the founding fathers of the Biola Beardsmen.

They wanted to start a club that would allow them to have fun but also do service projects such as visiting a nursing home as a community of beard enthusiasts, Andros said. They would like to hold Biola’s first facial hair competition and eventually expand the contest to other schools in the area or ideally, a world championship.
All activities of the Biola Beardsmen will benefit their social justice agenda of combating beard oppression, Andros quipped.

What makes a Biolan a beardsman

While any type of facial hair is welcome, the name Biola Beardsmen was chosen for the use of alliteration, according to Cole. Quite appropriately, Cole and Andros said “Nice mustache!” to a male student walking past us outside of Common Grounds.

“It’s for those who grow and appreciate facial hair,” Cole said. Ladies and faculty members are welcome to join the club.

Just how many girls are interested in the club? Cole reported that about a third of their Facebook fans are female.

“It’s one thing to be in the Biola Beardsmen, but if you get a female to sponsor your beard, you become a full-fledged Biola Beardsman,” Andros said. In order to be sponsored, the man simply needs a lady friend to say that she wants him to grow a certain type of facial hair.

Be there or be bare

Biola Beardsmen received almost 80 signatures at this semester’s clubs fair and have more than 170 fans on Facebook.

The club is working to develop a unique lexicon of beard-related jargon, according to Cole. Its members are dubbed “beardos.” Members can post “beardspiration” on the Facebook page, inspiring a certain style of facial hair or highlighting such bearded men as Lyman Stewart, Biola co-founder.

The Beardsmen meet in Business 201 every Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. As its founding fathers like to say, be there or be bare!