Tuesday, February 24, 2004
Shoestring inauguration
By Jeremy B. Yoder
and Jason D. Garber
EMU will welcome newly-arrived president Loren Swartzendruber in style, though last year’s $2.1 million budget deficit has forced the university to call upon that most Mennonite of talents, frugality, in planning the festivities.
As reported in the Oct. 9, 2003 issue of Weather Vane (“Campus Belts Tighten,” by Danielle Steckly), the President’s Cabinet has recommended an across-the-board budget cut of 5 percent and a tuition increase of 5 to 7 percent in an attempt to close the gap between spending and income. Academic Provost Beryl Brubaker wrote in a January 2003 budget proposal that EMU must consider cutting programs whose loss would “do the least harm to achieving our mission,” mentioning the Menno Simons Historical Library, the Intensive English Program, and the guest house, among others.
“We’re very conscious of budget issues,” said Director of Institutional Research Karen B. Miller, who chairs the inaugural steering committee. Miller and others involved in planning the inaugural events of Friday, Mar. 19 through Sunday, Mar. 28 described preparations which make the most of a tight financial situation.
Activities listed in the schedule include a performance by the Christian comedy group CPR, a fundraising golf tournament, a concert by Chamber Singers and the Bach Festival Chamber Orchestra, a luncheon for invited guests, a general reception open to students, and a cross-cultural semi-formal dance-type event called “Twilight on the Plaza.”
The Agora’s sources say that between $25,000 and $30,000 will be spent on the celebration. More than half of that, $15,000, will go for food.
“Food is important to Mennonites,” Miller said of the general reception, which is expected to serve 1400, and the luncheon for some 300 invited guests. Pioneer College Catering, which holds the contract for the EMU cafeteria and Royals Den snack shop, will provide food for both meals.
Divided between the 1700 guests expected at both meals, spending comes to $8.82 per plate.
The steering committee has made similar efforts to keep preparations in-house to reduce costs in all aspects of the inagural preparations.
EMU’s own graphic designer, Kirsten Parmer, has put together the official invitations, which were printed at the campus print shop. “We were able to save a lot of money by having our own print shop do it,” said steering committee member and EMU senior Lisa Mast.
Many academic departments and campus agencies have contributed portions of their own budgets toward parts of the festivities in which they have specific interest. Campus Ministries has shouldered part of the cost for a visual to be used in the inaugural worship service; Campus Activities Committee will use money normally reserved for the December semi-formal event to support “Twilight on the Plaza.”
Some events connected to the inauguration in its schedule would have happened whether the university were getting a new president or not, such as the spring Mainstage production of Shakespeare’s A Comedy of Errors, and the C. Henry Smith Peace Oratorical Contest.
The inauguration is worth this much effort because it is a prime opportunity to tell the wider academic community about EMU. Many of the guests invited to the inaugural luncheon are representatives from other colleges, which may have heard little or nothing about Mennonite higher education before they found the inaugural invitation in their mail.
“We’ve invited delegates from all the public and private schools in Virginia, and all the private schools in the United States,” said Miller. “[We] don’t really think they’re all going to come, obviously, but the idea is that once every 15 years you have an opportunity to let everyone know you exist. That’s one of the reasons why we try to plan a schedule of events that reflects who the institution is. Then that gives people who look at that invitation a sense of who we are even if they’re not coming.”
The name recognition EMU stands to gain through those invitations has very real results – a large portion of a college’s ranking in the annual U.S. News and World Report list of America’s Best Colleges comes from how well-known it is to its peers.
EMU’s dilemma between balancing the budget and making the inauguration a memorable event is turning up nationwide as public schools face sharp budget decreases connected to the ongoing economic downturn. An article in the Christian Science Monitor (“Colleges cut back on inaugural festivities,” June 3, 2003) specifically describes the University of Minnesota’s recent inauguration as an example of the trend. UMN spent $103,160, about $82,000 less than its last inaugural budget in 1997.
UMN’s inaugural spending works out to $2.15 for each of the roughly 48,000 students at its Twin Cities campus. Split among EMU’s 1400 students, spending for the upcoming festivities could come to $21.43 a head. To put it in perspective another way, though, $103,160 works out to 0.15 percent of UMN’s $67.6 million budget; $30,000 is about 0.11 percent of EMU’s total spending in 2003.
Vagina update
By Jeremy B. Yoder
V-Day Harrisonburg College Students raised $3,300 for women’s shelters in a weekend of benefit performances of “The Vagina Monlogues,” Eve Ensler’s look at female sexuality.
“It’s a good turnout,” said EMU junior Rachel Swartzendruber, one of the project’s primary organizers.
Swartzendruber added that ticket prices were aimed at drawing sellout crowds, which might have raised as much as $6,000.
Ninety percent of proceeds went to support FirstStep and Citizens Against Sexual Assault, local anti-violence agencies. The other ten percent went to a program selected by the broader V-Day organization.
The event was forced to move to Court Square Theatre when EMU refused to allow the “Monologues” to be performed on campus because of their sexually explicit content.
Can theology survive science?
By Peter Sensenig
Theologians, philosophers, and scientists alike cannot overestimate the critical role that language plays in each of their disciplines. From a religious standpoint, language has been at the same time cohesive and divisive.
For example, language such as “the love of Christ” can bind people together in a common goal of service, or can provide direction to a church. In contrast, division can be caused by different understandings of what it means to “receive the Holy Spirit.”
However, often language creates an appearance of controversy when in actuality the underlying beliefs of the dueling parties are compatible or nearly identical. The success of Christianity in surviving and flourishing in a world driven by scientific knowledge depends on our ability to determine the truly important theology that lies underneath our language.
Having said this, I can now more safely present as an example a question that is on the verge of explosion: Do human beings have souls? Science says no. Traditional Christian belief says yes. But it is this type of stark negative and affirmative that deepens the chasm between the two and leaves theology scrambling to remain an academic discipline.
Our response should be to clarify by asking several important questions. First, what is it that we like about the concept of soul? Why do we have a need for the soul to exist? When we answer these questions we may discover that our own theology does not rest on this word.
A second important question to ask is this: How is soul defined by insiders (Christians who use the word in teaching, praying, etc.) and how is it defined by outsiders (those examining the idea from other backgrounds or through the lens of science)?
As a Christian, I believe that faith is not dependent upon science (or vice versa), nor is faith contradictory to science. If theology is to stay alive as an academic discipline, we need to apply the above method of evaluation not only to the question of soul, but also to issues of peace, witness, sanctity of life, and many more.
With tongue in cheek: Demonic forces strike Northlawn
By Andrew Jenner
EASTERN MENNONITE UNIVERSITY, Virigina – Unidentified demonic forces ambushed a group of EMU first-year males yesterday evening as they approached the front steps to the Northlawn Residential Hall.
The assailants reportedly implanted impure thoughts and a general attitude of horniness in the impressionable young men as they headed towards Northlawn on what began simply as a “friendly visit” in the words of an unnamed source close to one of the victims. In the wake of the attack, at least three sins are known to have been committed, including overnight violations by two members of the party and one instance of inappropriate touching.
One survivor of the attack noted the quickness with which it occurred: “We were just walking along and all of the sudden I noticed some of my friends looking up into the Northlawn windows, probably hoping to see a naked girl or something.”
Response by the occupying Heavenly Army was quick – an emergency prayer vigil convened in Thomas Plaza within minutes. At least a dozen people knelt in hand-wringing, tooth-gnashing prayer for several hours, but none of the demonic assailants were captured or killed.
The speed at which the attackers faded back into the general EMU population is indicative of increasing sophistication and detailed planning on the part of a small group of insurgent demons bent on damning the entire campus to blackest hell.
Campus pastors reacted with concern to this latest attack, which occurred in a normally calm and pious section of campus. While sinning is a daily occurrence in the apostate Woods triangle, it heretofore has not frequently occurred elsewhere at EMU.
“We must increase the volume of our Sunday-night Celebration praise session, and distribute more cartoon tracts outlining the path to salvation in order to combat the growing spiritual darkness on campus” said a visibly shaken Bible Department professor in a press conference late last night.
Meanwhile, the university president has asked the Board of Trustees for an additional $200 billion to fund EMU’s so-called “War on Evil.” An administration spokesperson issued the following statement this morning: “With the proliferation of subversive underground newspapers, a Student Government Association bent on pushing an extreme leftist agenda, a growing number of students who openly mock the Community Lifestyle Commitment and advertising for the “Vagina Monologues” occurring on campus, we can hardly afford to be complacent. These manifestations of pure and vile evil must be pursued and brought to justice. It would also be nice to get new carpeting in the President’s Reception Room.”
This latest attack brings to 435 the number of sins committed at EMU since the spring semester began. The inability to control renegade forces of evil is a growing embarrassment to a university already faced with declining enrollment, financial turmoil, and a terrible men’s basketball program.
