A brief list of better options Bethel can spend their money on to make campus life amazing. 

By Cyrus Ruch

Bethel Student Government recently unveiled a plan to transform the Underground into a hub for community life. This way, students will be encouraged to stay on campus rather than packing up their bags every weekend and going somewhere fun. The plans for the Underground include adding a concession stand, arcade machines and late hours of operation, turning this room into the perfect place to meet your future wife during the first two weeks of college. 

With all this money being spent to enact this project, the question arises. “What else could be done with that sweet, sweet student engagement money?” I’ve taken the liberty of compiling my best options.

1) The Lissner Tunnel: It’s no secret that Lissnerites are isolated. They’re misfits, perpetually failing to win homecoming despite their sheer number advantage. Freshmen Hill, Heritage and Arden Village are all close by, Lissner stands as an outcast of average sophomores and juniors who couldn’t find somewhere better to be. The biggest struggle is to drag themselves out of their warm haven and travel across campus to the main buildings during the cold winter months that curse this land. In order to encourage these students to actually have a social life, Bethel needs to build a tunnel connecting these buildings. 

2) The Boss Ross Statue: We all are proud of our all-knowing overlord Ross Allen, president of Bethel University. It is only fair then, that he be the center point of our community. My proposal is to build a massive muscle-bound statue of our hero. Posed shirtless and holding a leather-bound Covenant, he stands with one leg on top of a slain dragon, which represents all sorts of evils, such as drinking, dancing and premarital hand-holding. Students will be able to gather here to praise our leader and proudly proclaim how great our community is while basking in its glory. 

3) The Two Minutes Hate: With how proud we are of our community, it is only fair that we condemn our rivals. I propose a mandatory Two Minutes Hate every week, where we can spend a whole 120 seconds cursing and insulting our rival, Northwestern. Their heathen ways have not gone unnoticed by us, and so we must declare them as our enemies. Any relationship between this practice and a similar one in dystopian literature is purely coincidental, and if you are concerned about this, we will kindly refer you to the newly installed Ministry of Love which we put in what was once our Reconciliation Department.

4) Freshmen Hill Fight Club: Many freshmen have great experiences bonding with each other within their dorm their first year. However, an effort could be made to make sure that the dorms on freshmen hill can have events with one another, for which I propose a fight pit in the middle of the circle. Nothing will get you to know your dorm neighbors better than bludgeoning their jaw with your elbow as your fans cheer your name. As a bonus, our nursing students will be able to have a bunch of fresh patients to practice sewing up stitches, bandaging wounds and setting a broken leg here and there. 

5)  Increasing DC Hours: Oftentimes, the best time for college students to build community is by eating together, the DC is the perfect place for this. Unfortunately, many college students have weird schedules and may not even find time to eat at normal hours. Now, this may be the craziest idea yet, but what if, just maybe, dinner went a little later. Instead of closing at 7, it closed at 8. This would allow students to not only build community later, but get food in a time frame which met their busy schedules. But no, I fear this idea is too outrageous for Bethel. It would really be ludicrous for young adults with messy schedules to eat later than 7. I’ll just go ahead and scrap this idea.