After the school year’s first open proposal day last week, Thursday’s Student Government Association senate meeting gave senators a chance to vote on the three outside proposals, all of which would fund existing campus events. Before the voting period, however, some special guests arrived to the senate: President Barry Corey and his director of administration Brian Shook.
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As he does once per semester, Corey sat in on a portion of the senate meeting, dialoguing with senators about new initiatives SGA is taking while he and Shook revealed some new administration events.
Corey expressed a deep desire to listen to Biola students, especially the senate as representatives of those students. He also restated his public desire for Biola to be an exception from the constant political polarization and division enveloping the country.
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Corey wants Biola to take an active role in promoting civil discourse. One way he hopes to do so is by displaying public examples of faculty with different views on important issues discussing them in a respectful manner.
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With this goal in mind, Corey and Shook delivered updates on the “duologue” event, where two professors with diverging perspectives will debate their views on a certain issue at a public forum once per semester. The next event will take place Oct. 3 and feature professor of sociology Brad Christerson and assistant professor of biblical and theological studies Thaddeus Williams, who will discuss what biblical social justice looks like.
Christerson and Williams will speak briefly at the Wednesday morning All-Community Chapel that day before a more extensive forum takes place in Calvary Chapel at 7 p.m. that night.
“We want to encourage students with different viewpoints to talk to each other, not about or at each other,” Corey said.
The spring 2019 edition of the duologue will be held on Feb. 6, and Shook encouraged SGA members to suggest both topics they would like to see covered and professors they would like to see take part in the debate.
CANDYLAND, WOVEN UNANIMOUSLY PASSED
After Corey and Shook left, the senate turned its attention to voting on the proposals that were introduced during the previous week’s meeting. The first proposal discussed was Alpha’s Candyland, the annual community outreach event that opens the hall to the surrounding community so families have a safe place to take young children trick-or-treating.
The proposal was met with widespread support throughout the senate. After a brief discussion in which several senators openly endorsed the proposal, the senate passed it in the full amount of $2,000 by a unanimous 11-0 vote.
The next proposal, from the Woven Conference’s leadership committee, received similar enthusiasm. After an even shorter discussion, that proposal also passed unanimously and in full. SGA will give the organizers of the yearly women’s leadership conference $5,998 to run the daylong event and make it free for Biola students to attend.
$500 SLASHED FROM DECK THE HAVEN PROPOSAL
The proposal from residents of Hart Hall’s Haven floor to fund Deck the Haven, however, was met with far more scrutiny from the senate. The authors of the proposal initially asked for $7,250, a $1,250 increase from the floor’s 2017 budget.
Many senators expressed reservations about the dramatic spike in cost, even though Love, a Haven resident, reminded his colleagues that any unused funds would be returned to SGA. However, he also admitted that the cost needed to pay Event Services would likely be far less than what the initial proposal called for and that the proposal allowed for some flexibility with regards to the exact cost.
After a brief reluctance, Love, along with several other senators endorsed Bluff senator Lauren Sutter’s motion to pass the proposal in part by funding it for $500 less than what was requested. That version of the proposal passed unanimously.
Deck the Haven will once again take place in a tent near Flour Fountain, and despite the senate’s unwillingness to fund the proposal in full, the $6,750 amount that SGA pledged to the residents is still a substantial increase in funding compared to the eleventh-hour proposal that revived the once-canceled event in 2017.
Love said his support of the partial passage was also due to Haven’s need to secure funding for the event at an earlier date this time around.
The senate was also slated to vote on SGA president Sierra McCoy’s internal proposal to fund giveaways for key Biola Athletics events, but the meeting ran out of time before senators could discuss the bid. A motion to table a vote on the bill for the following week’s meeting unanimously passed, and the senate adjourned immediately after.
