Students’ Association passed a resolution Wednesday to begin working with university administration on an athletic tradition which would provide cowbells for every student.
Students could bring cowbells to all outdoor athletic events, said Colton Powell, professional development representative. Each student’s graduation year would be on the handle and the four sides of their cowbell could be painted with the logos of their academic department, social club or other student organization.
“By the time you graduate, you have four sides of a cowbell that uniquely show your time at ACU,” said Powell, sophomore finance major from Nashville, Tennessee.
Powell wrote the resolution because he said the university lacks athletic traditions which have succeeded at other universities such as the Baylor Line and Texas A&M’s Midnight Yell. He said he wanted a unique, West Texas tradition for ACU to show support for athletics but also create individual keep sakes which could be passed down through generations.
“We have a lot of traditions at ACU, and that’s what makes ACU really great,” Powell said. “But we’re lacking that in athletics. If we don’t capitalize on the momentum now and the excitement around the football program and the baseball program and all that, we might not have another chance to do it.”
To paint the bells, Powell said a Wildcat Venture business could be started so students who paint bells could be paid and each organization’s logo could be available in a template.
Student Congress voted unanimously to pass the resolution which will show the university administration that students support this idea. Powell said the next step is to work with administration to get the cowbells to students by the first game in the football stadium this fall. The cowbells could be distributed to all freshmen at Wildcat Week, and the campus store, social clubs, Wildcat Reign, and SA could distribute cowbells to upperclassmen.
Congress also passed a resolution to ask the Hunter Welcome Center to waive the fee for the International Students’ Association’s upcoming food event, the International Food Festival. Last week, ISA president Christi Lim requested $6,350 from SA so the group could rent the Hunter Welcome Center. She said the Welcome Center charges about $400 per section and the group needed four sections for the event. ISA also needed money for 14 student cooks to prepare an international meal. During the budget meeting, she worked with her multicultural representative to ask for more funding because the group only received $1600 from SA.
“Our representative, the multicultural representative, she was pretty new, ” Lim said. “When she tried to make amendments and stuff she said it was her first time doing that and she was pretty shaky on stuff. I kind of just felt like the representatives should have more experience.”
The multicultural representatives include Elyssa Molina and Olive Tuyishimire.
After the budget meeting, Kevin Shurtz, professional development representative and junior computer science major from Southlake, talked to Lim about the lack of sufficient funds and this week he presented the resolution to waive the Welcome Center fee. Lim said she had never met Shurtz before, and was surprised he wanted to help even though he doesn’t represent the multicultural groups.
“I’m really thankful that he did it, but it’s like out of nowhere,” Lim said. “I’m really thankful that there are people in SA who care enough to figure this out.”
Each year, ISA plans for the food festival to have 150 guests, but Lim said more people always show up for the event, so this year 200 guests will be expected.
Congress passed a bill to fund 50 discounted student tickets to the ACU Theatre production of The Mountaintop which will open March 2. The tickets would be discounted to $10 per ticket. Taylor Crumpton, senior class president and social work major from Oakland, California, presented the bill.
Congress did not pass a resolution proposing an amendment to the Students’ Association, which was presented Wednesday. Caitlin Walker, junior class vice president, wrote the resolution and said she explained the resolution for more than 30 minutes but when a vote was called for, about 25 Congress members abstained from voting, so it could not be passed. If it had passed, the resolution would call for an amendment to the constitution to be voted on by the entire student body in April.
The resolution would “better the communication gap between the ACU Students’ Association and the Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA) through the creation of a minority counsel, to be called Bridge,” according to the resolution document. Walker said she worked on the resolution with Prentice Ashford, director of OMA, Abbey Moses, SA executive president, and Chris Riley, vice president of Student Life.
“This is our first year having a multicultural rep,” Walker said. “We’ve seen that it doesn’t work, and so I want to change it.”
Walker said the resolution would require the multicultural representative to be a member of an OMA group to better represent those groups.
“After last night the tension that was in the room of SA, people think I’m gonna give up on this,” Walker said, “but I’m not.”
Walker said she plans to work on reducing confusion and getting more support from Congress members so the resolution could be passed later.
