By Kelsi Peace, Managing Editor
Special interests on campus received a voice at Wednesday’s Students’ Association meeting, thanks to several pieces of legislation.
Rep. Aaron Escobedo presented a bill to spend $140 to purchase a table for ACU’s spring Dinner Theatre, “Sabrina Fair.”
Tickets for the dinner will be auctioned off only to married or engaged couples.
“We represent the entirety of the student body, and they’re a part that feels kind of left out,” Escobedo said. “It’s a different set of people.”
Escobedo said that in conversations with some of his constituents, he has heard that couples often have time or financial constraints that prevent them from attending university events.
Congress passed the bill 29 votes supporting, one opposing and two abstaining with no debate.
By a unanimous voice vote, Congress appropriated $500 to help bring C.S. Lewis scholar Michael Ward to campus.
Ward’s latest book, Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis, was released in January.
“He is amazing,” senior senator Hallie Roberts, the bill’s author, told Congress. Roberts said she met Ward while studying abroad in Oxford during the spring 2006 semester.
Funding from Congress will help pay for gas and lodging – Ward did not request to be paid to come. The money will also sponsor free copies of Ward’s book, which Roberts said will be given away so Ward can autograph them for students.
Rep. Casey Bingham presented a resolution to support creation a separate praise Chapel that would use instruments in worship, but later withdrew his resolution to obtain more research and support.
Bingham said he spoke with more than 100 students and reviewed Man Chapel and The Call – which both use instrumental worship. “There’s a lot of support,” he said.
Bingham said he has received some opposition, but most stems from discomfort rather than outright opposition.
“If they already allow what they are allowing in Man Chapel,” Bingham said, “This appears to be the next step.”
The resolution did not specify how often the alternative Chapel would occur. Most opposition to the resolution, before Bingham withdrew it, came from Congress members who worried the alternative Chapel would hurt community during praise days.
Rep. Kyle Moore raised issue with backing a movement that would take a “chunk of the student body out of Chapel” without speaking with administrators first. Because Bingham withdrew his resolution, Congress did not vote.
Rep. Ben Ward resigned his position, but Congress did not have the required twothirds of members present to appoint new positions.
