And the award for worst chapel goes to...

...the SGA awards chapel. SGA stands for Student Government Association but perhaps a better name would be the Spiritualy God Awful. Most people are smart enough to avoid the awards chapel. I, however, was unaware that the chapel i was attending was the awards chapel and paid dearly for my mistake

You know its bad when you need a 7 minute disclaimer on everything else you plan on doing for the rest of chapel. You know its really bad when its Kate Hamilton doing the disclaiming (a bad idea in itself) To summarize the disclaimer, they're giving out awards but dont know what the qualifications they're looking for are, they just know that people have done things that sound like they fit with the title of the award.

What's worse is that they take from an extremely small minority to offer the award. Blind choosing would yeild better results. For example, for being the best communicator, the Commissioner of Communications was chosen. whoa, way to go out of the box, but the only reason she fits the bill is because of her title. (nothing against her, but there are plenty of better communicators out there, they just dont have a fancy title)

If you really want to hand out awards, give it to the most qualified person, taking many more people into account and no, title isn't a qualification. Neither is Kate Hamilton.

Chapel Scanning

Situation: people don't go to more than 2/3 of chapels and the last 1/3 is embarassing. However, Houghton feels it is necessary for students to have spiritual nourishment (appropriately so).

Outlook: A certain prof suggested we go back to assigned seating and hope that those who truly want to be in chapel will positvely influence those who do not. It will also prevent the 'homework doing' in the back of the balcony. However, I think it will more likely disrupt those who try to get something out of chapel and make things seem more authoritarian. As I said in the first post, I dont think Will's idea will work. It's essentially what happens the second and third last weeks of the semester - after people have largely completed their requirement (and no longer have to go to chapel) and before those who have put it off to the end are required to attend the rest.

What I suggested to the aforementioned prof is that we have a chapel on monday and wednesday, and require faculty to lead small groups as an analysis and application time. This will allow for faculty participation, increase the funding for the chapels by 33% (hopefully making them better), allow for a more realistic "what can we do?" application, allow us to interact with students that we wouldn't normally get to know, and still have time to get to our 11:50 classes :-)

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Over the past few weeks, there has been some discussion regarding the chapel attendance policy. There have been a few suggestions, through editorials to the star and through individual conversations, such as requiring faculty attendance, reducing the skip count, and Will’s test of will (to go to chapel). But then, the conversation stopped. I’d like to prevent that. I’ve created a blog/forum so that this and other similar conversations like it, don’t stop, that they continue to either a mutual understanding or a change in policy.

I think requiring faculty attendance will accentuate the lack of participation in the last third of the semester and that people will not voluntarily go to chapel (whether for busyness or other reasons). What do you all think? Perhaps through these conversations your opinion may be heard. I plan on posting different issues similar to this, like the fiscal responsibility of SGA to fund or not to fund ROTC, among others on a regular basis.