[Editor’s note: “What it feels like” is a new Clarion series – inspired by Esquire magazine – written by reporters who want to share the stories of the Bethel students you pass by in the hall every day. – Maddie DeBilzan, editor.]

What it feels like to … check IDs

Sophomore Riley Smith surveyed the entrance through glass panes. Inside the small security hut at the west entrance of Bethel University, he leaned back in the black padded office chair during his first ever security shift. As the sun set the gate closed. He waited for low beams and complaints. Six female students arrived in force. Smith followed the code and asked for IDs. All six.

“Do we have to?” the driver asked, as if told to complete her math homework.

If Smith wants to get paid, they must.

Since the beginning of the Fall 2018 semester, Bethel students have been forced to show the IDs of every passenger during hours when the east gate is closed. Although it enhances campus security, it has not made student drivers happy.

“It’s a flip of the coin whether people are going to get agitated,” said Smith, a business major. “Everybody knows the rules. I have to enforce them.”

–Zach Walker, Clarion correspondent

What it feels like … to have your major cut

Emily Lewis lounged in one of the two black leather chairs directly next to the entrance of the independent filmmaking and media production lobby. An email from President Jay Barnes addressing recent faculty and academic cuts appeared on her phone at 2:24 p.m. Lewis took a deep breath while she tapped her password into her phone. She had a feeling her major was on the chopping block. The pre-acceptance of what’s to come did not make the blow hurt any less.

The place she spends 90 percent of her time on campus, within 15 seconds, no longer felt like home.

She shrunk further into her leather chair and Lewis was hit with a wave of anger. She says her mind acted like a seesaw going back and forth between laughing and feeling resentment toward the school that has taken a great deal of her money.

“It made me feel I didn’t matter,” Lewis said.

Just a few days earlier independent filmmaking launched its first podcast studio. She said the major had been expanding with more students declaring it as their major this year and showing interest than any before.

To Lewis film was “giving people a way to tell a story that is relevant right now.”

“It’s hard imagining giving back to Bethel,” Lewis said.

–Sara Dvorak, Clarion correspondent