Elimination of Fall Retreat Details Revealed at Town Hall Meeting

David Leedy, Kylie Willis, and Jonathan Sheaffer discuss the elimination of Fall Retreat weekend at Monday’s town hall meeting. || Photo credit to Abigail Miller

More details were unveiled regarding the elimination of the widely-loved King’s tradition Fall Retreat during a town hall meeting hosted on Monday. 

The meeting was held in order to create a dialogue between students and staff about the new changes, and to address any concerns that students had. Dean of Students David Leedy, Christian Formation Coordinator Kylie Willis, and Assistant Director of Student Life Jonathan Sheaffer sat on the panel.

Before students stood up to ask the panel questions, Leedy and Shaeffer both debriefed the student body about the basis on the decision of the elimination of Fall Retreat, in addition to the ways they are reinvesting energies and budgets to foster community differently without the annual retreat.

The first main reason of eliminating Fall Retreat, Leedy explained, was financials. “What you guys may not know is the college runs on an $8 million deficit annually, which means every month we have to raise $750,000 to keep the lights on and the doors open,” Leedy said. “That is the physical reality. We have generous donors who have enabled us to do that, but we have to reckon with the landscape of higher education. The heat is turning up, colleges are having more difficulties making ends meet, and so they don't reinvent themselves and think critically about budgets and they can be in deep water. We are trying to get ahead of that curve and make sure we're not hurting ourselves.”

The other main reason was lack of Christian formation and spiritual development at the retreat. “When Fall Retreat started, Christian formation was the heart and soul of what we were doing with the retreat,” Leedy continued. “Over time as it’s gotten bigger and our community’s evolved, that's become less the focus. I know it was revealed even just in the attendance at the breakout sessions, and people are there more for the community and the connection more than the deeper Christian life stuff.”

Sheaffer then spoke on the other campus opportunities that are going to be put in place of Fall Retreat, including more funding for specific House Retreats, Drama Competition during Parent’s Weekend, and a King’s Day-Away. Sheaffer explained that House Retreats will now be easier to schedule because it won’t conflict with extracurriculars such as athletics, debate and mock trial. Parent’s weekend will now have another activity to appease visiting parents with drama comp. The details for the King’s Day-Away will be in the hands of next year’s SBP and their cabinet. The panel recognized that these replacement activities are not going to be the same as the excitement of Fall Retreat, and there will be some transitional evaluations for the future.

“This is not a one-to-one trade in our mind,” Sheaffer said. “We're just looking at the new reality. How can we do the best with what we have? And I think it really is going to be a fun time. We're going to meet some new needs we haven't met in the past, and we're going to have to continue thinking strategically about how to meet some of the needs that Fall Retreat used to meet.”

Students were then invited to ask the panel questions and address concerns. Most of the questions were about the current budget, as well as burdens on future exec teams to plan and collaborate for multiple-house events. There were also questions addressed about Drama Competition, Christian formation, and faculty and staff being involved with campus-wide events.

“You mentioned that Fall Retreat cost about $72,000 in with the ticket sales covers about a 1/4th, so $18,000,” Ellen Turner, a junior in the House of Thatcher asked the panel. “In an $8 million deficit that's not a ton of money, but it’s still a significant amount. Can you explain where that money will now go?”

The panel answered that the rest of that money will go back into operating budgets. The Council is looking at every part of the college and where they can scale back the gap of the $8 million deficit. They also mentioned that House Retreat budgets will be based on the size of the house, and money will be given to houses per capita, coming to about three to four thousand per house.

“My main concern is, and I’ve heard a lot of this, is that the burden of replacing Fall Retreat is now going to fall on the shoulders of the exec teams,” Blake Ashley, a junior in the House of Lewis said to the panel. “What was a school and a cabinet planned event, is now going to be up to exec teams to plan over their summers. And now [from the panel] I just heard to plan more [multiple-house] events, and to do Red and Green Affair, (which has killed Lewis and Thatchers for 10 years running). I’m just wondering if you’ve ever considered taking some of that $50,000 you’re saving and consider giving the exec teams a raise?”

The panel expressed that their is going to be a bigger presence of House Advisors working alongside exec teams to plan House Retreats to take burdens off of exec team members. They also plan on changing the ways of how onboarding future exec teams will look like and some of the training that they’ll receive at Statesmanship in August, as well as before the summer. 

“This fall, we are committed to the plans, and it’s an experiment, right?” Leedy said. “We’ll evaluate, see how goes, see if it’s effective for our community, does it work, does it not work? I don't think we are making a hundred year plan [by eliminating Fall Retreat] here. The main question is what works for the community, and what is most effective. If we do this next year, and we think Fall Retreat does something that we really can’t replace in other ways, and a donor comes along who has the means, that are durable and have some longevity to it, then I think there's a possibility [for Fall Retreat to return].”

The panel, on behalf of the entire team that made the decision to eliminate Fall Retreat, recognize that it is going to take some time for people to transition and make the new campus-wide changes become the new normal. But, as for right now, amidst still remaining questions and concerns, the annual King’s Fall Retreat as it is known is over, and may not make a comeback for a long time.

|| Photo credit to Abigail Miller

DEAN LEEDY: Alright guys, we are going to jump in. Keep enjoying your Chick-fil-A and we’ll start the town hall. The reason we are doing this, I wanted to give you guys a chance to talk back to us, ask us questions you have about the changes that are coming down the pike next fall to make it more a dialogue, to get your concerns for the plans for next year, etc. So in terms of the plans as you noted in my email, Fall Retreat as we know it, is not happening this fall.

And I know that makes a number of us sad, myself included. I love Fall Retreat. My kids love Fall Retreat. My daughter, who is now 8, has been to every Fall Retreat since she was born, except for the first one because she was like a week old. My kids talk about it all year long. Love it. Love the feel of hanging out with college students. But, it’s more than the community getting together upstate in the woods. There's a lot of fun. There is a lot of good. There is a degree of sadness in my own heart. I know that’s true for a number of you guys. So, that’s not happening.  Couple of reasons why to reiterate what I said in the email and then I'm going to have Scheffer talk about what is actually happening in place of Fall Retreat. Reasons why, I mentioned in my email, finances are a factor. Fall Retreat does cost us $72,000 and we are unique among universities in the country pulling off Retreat like this with that kind of expenditure, and ticket sales do cover 1/4 of that. I know in the EST article, [it asked] well we raise all of that money, $440,000 at end of December, why not apply some of that to the cost of Fall Retreat? What you guys may not know is the college runs on an $8 million deficit annually, which means every month we have to raise $750,000 to keep the lights on and the doors open, which means that for that $440,000 we raise, we have to raise that twice a month to stay open. That is the physical reality. We have generous donors who have enabled us to do that, but we have to reckon with the landscape of higher education, the heat is turning up, and colleges are having more difficulties making ends meet and so don't reinvent themselves and think critically about budgets and they can be in deep water. We are trying to get ahead of that curve and make sure we're not hurting ourselves. So, that’s a factor. But, I think there are other factors, it’s not just the money. Christian formation is a big part of this, as I mentioned in my email. Fall Retreat over time, well when Fall Retreat started, Christian formation was the heart and soul of what we were doing with the retreat. That and community. Overtime as it’s gotten bigger and our community’s evolved, that's become less the focus. I know it was revealed even just in the attendance at the breakout sessions, and people are there more for the community and the connection more than the deeper Christian life stuff. Not to count out everyone, I know some people are there for that very much so. So, but I think we can think of that in more effective ways in our community.

So we've been rethinking how we do Christian formation at King’s. How can we do it more effectively, and how can we continue building campus-wide community in a way to benefit all students, present and the future? So those are things we've been really put our minds to. So I’m going to ask Sheaffer you to talk a couple minutes about what we're doing in the fall in place of Fall Retreat. It’s not like we are axing Fall Retreat and saying we're done with it. We actually are reinvesting some of those energies and that money in the community in other ways that we think is more effective when it comes to Christian formation and even community on campus. Sheaffer, can you speak on that a bit?

JONATHAN SHEAFFER: Yeah, so with the reality of there not being a Fall Retreat that provided an opportunity to see what we could do instead and I think there are some exciting opportunities. Of course, the first is that we were having all ten House Retreat that same weekend that had been earmarked for Fall Retreat and I think this is exciting for a couple of reasons, the school is going to be able to help the houses pay for that. I was talking to a house president the other day after the Fall Retreat announcement and she said that the most stressful part of her position this year has been fundraising for a house retreat. To be able to take that burden off of exec teams and to take that burden off of houses be able to fund those Retreats, I  think that's going to be a huge benefit for our community. That also allows us to purposefully schedule in House Retreats into the calendar at a time when it doesn't conflict with athletics, or debate, or mock trial, or any of the other extracurriculars that are going on. I really do think that's an exciting opportunity to do all the House Retreats the same weekend. I've already heard some houses talking about maybe doubling up and going to the same place together in and changing about how they think about House Retreats a little bit which is very exciting for me. And I love the creativity that I've heard as people have received this news has started thinking about how they want to make it the best opportunity for themselves. That’s the first major change, the second drama comp, that used to happen during Fall Retreat is not going to be happening during parent’s weekend. That's another thing I'm really excited about. If you’ve ever been to parent’s weekend, if your parents have ever been to parents weekend, there's not a whole lot going on on campus. We have a brunch, we have some mingling and some Q&A sessions, but there's not a whole lot going on to show what our community is really about what it's like to be a student here. I remember going to family weekends when I was young and my brothers were in college and we always go see the school play that weekend or went to a basketball game or whatever was going on on campus and it was really fun to get to be a part of the student body and what they were excited about. So I think that it's going to be really fun to show parents what drama comp looks like, and just that little piece into our community. Seeing houses cheer for each other for themselves and then the dramas that go on of course with that.

And then the third change, is that we are instituting a King's Day-Away, and we don't have a whole lot of details on what this is going to look like because it's going to be run by the new SBP and his or her cabinet. SBP elections are going to be happening in February, this next month. So that's crazy for all of us I'm sure, but whoever is elected in a position of choosing cabinet in that team will plan a King's day away. We were thinking somewhere like Coney Island or Governor’s Island, somewhere that everybody can get to but that we can still have some of that community-wide intermingling. They’ll plan on the activities that are going on, there are ways to get people interacting with people outside their house. We're hoping to get staff and faculty and families and everybody out to that, like they would have to Fall Retreat. So I’m really excited for that opportunity as well. I do want to say, we are not making any of these changes as a one-to-one trade with Fall Retreat we realize there are things that we are going to miss from Fall Retreat that these things are not going to make up for. This is not a one-to-one trade in our mind. We're just looking at the new reality. How can we do the best with what we have? And I think it really is going to be a fun time. We're going to meet some new needs we haven't met in the past, and we're going to have to continue thinking strategically about how to meet some of the needs that Fall Retreat used to meet.

DEAN LEEDY: Questions comments concerns y'all have?

HARRISON CHAPMAN: So, first of all, of the side of drama comp, things. I'm just slightly concerned with the choice of parent’s weekend and I just want to know a little more about why. First of all, I know there's some people that will be antsy about performing that kind of thing in front of their parents, but secondly and more importantly, I think in terms of freshmen are required in a house to be 75% participation. And I would go on a limb and say at least half of the parents that show up to Parent’s weekend are parents of incoming freshmen or new freshmen, and so they’re going to likely plan to go have a weekend with their kids. And, the kid sometimes might choose that over participating in Drama Comp, so I’m just kind of concerned about that.

JONATHAN SHEAFFER: Yeah, I speak to that. So first of all, there's a lot of things that are still in work - we are still figuring out exactly how they look. So things aren't set in stone and I can't speak for certain about how things are going to run, but we have talked about having the drama comp early in the program of parents weekend so that it's not all weekend of practicing for Drama Comp away from your parents and then finally doing drama comp, and then your parents say bye, so we want that earlier in the program so that you get it over with quickly and you can move on from that and then go hang out with your parents. Secondly, I think a lot of parents are going to want to see their kids in the drama comp, I think that's going to be a draw. I think that's something that the parents are just going to want to come they're going to want to see, yes, New York City, they’re also going to see their kid, but they're also going to want to see the types of things at their kid is involved with, so I think there is a draw there. Also as far as the 75 percent participation in drama comp for freshmen, we haven't talked about the rules for drama comp, yet for next year, those could change. We want to factor in things like that, and about how parents weekend will affect drama comp. In the past 75 percent participation by freshman had two primary purposes: one, it was right at the beginning of the school year, and so we wanted to get freshmen involved in their houses in the first couple of weeks and it was great way to do it, and number two, they were required to be in drama comp, they were that much more likely to come to Fall Retreat,  which was another goal. And so I'm not saying that the 75 percent rule will go away, but there are some factors changing and we will consider those as we put together the drama comp rules in the future and we think strategically about how do we use drama comp to fulfill the purposes for where it is now?

ELLEN TURNER: So you mentioned that Fall Retreat cost about $72,000 in with the ticket sales covers about a 1/4th, so $18,000. Can you kind of further explain where that about $54,000...In an $8 million deficit that's not a ton of money, but it’s still a significant amount, can you explain where that money will now go?

DEAN LEEDY: Well the short of it will be the operating budgets. This is not just Fall Retreat, we are looking at every part of the college and where are we able to trim and scale back so that we close that gap and that deficit so, in short, the general operating budget, that $8 million deficit.

DOMINIQUE LACROIX: So, we thought [inaudible] regardless of the $72,000, it’s not primarily a financial decision you are making here, but it’s also that you guys don’t necessarily see the weight of keeping it, so I guess while we are moving drama comp and we are having house retreats, and things like that…[on the basis of] spiritual formation, how do we view that, where as a lot of people were impacted this year spiritually at Fall Retreat, and we aren’t necessarily going to have that same kind of gathering for the entire community to be spiritually formed. And my concern is with people who find their identity not necessarily in their house, or with certain people, if they are just going to House Retreat, they’re not going to have the incentive to want to do that, and we are trying to press spiritual formation going forward without something like Fall Retreat.

DEAN LEEDY: Can you rephrase the question, like what specifically you're asking?

DOMINIQUE LACROIX: Yes, there are two parts. Mainly why did we not think it wasn’t beneficial enough to keep it? Obviously if finances aren’t the primary reason for getting rid of it. And also, what do we see as the goal for spiritual formation going forward for the community as a whole, rather than just splitting it up into houses? 

DEAN LEEDY: Regarding the Christian formation, King’s is a university, and we are a multifaceted diverse group of people, how do we most effectively pursue Christian formation as a community? And we are constantly thinking about that, asking that question. So, like I mentioned earlier, I think there are some things that we can try, new initiatives that we think we'll get at Christian formation in perhaps deeper ways, via house retreats, via other means. Everything that I'm saying though, it has to be tested with reality, right? We think we can get at some of these things in a deeper way and a more strategic away, but we have to do and see and evaluate. Which we will do. So what I'm saying is that going forward, we are not having Fall Retreat this year, this coming fall, but we're going to be evaluating all one way, and instead of Fall Retreat, it’s the all-campus gatherings, is that helping to foster campus-wide community or not, campus-wide identity, drama, how does that work with parents weekend? So we are going to be evaluating that all on the way and see what and what really works for the community. What’s the net effect in the community, Christian formation, community, campus identity, all of those things. So, that's what we'll do. That’s my promise to you. And we’ll see how it plays out.

KYLIE WILLIS: As for like, House Retreats and about how we are sort of encouraging Christian formation within the House Retreats that are happening, we're actually still going to decide upon a theme for the house Retreats, and it's not all figured out yet, but we are likely going to encourage you guys to do some things on your house Retreats that will specifically address Christian formation, whether it be reading through some scripture that has to do with the theme and all of the houses will get the same theme and so you guys are welcome to invite guest speakers to come to your house retreat, as well as like work with your house advisors in order to help bring lift, and supplement some of the work that the exec team is going to have to do you when organizing these things, but we're going to be encouraging houses to engage on a spiritual level at their Fall Retreat in a deeper way than has possibly happened before. And like Dean Leedy said, this isn't like set in stone for the entirety of the college moving down the road. What we're trying to do is figure out what works best in order to help bring lift the spiritual life on campus. So, right now there are many opportunities where people can engage in spiritual life on campus and it's all voluntary like every single thing that you guys do is voluntary. If you come to Public Reading of Scripture, it’s because you find value in it and... or you get lunch, but… it's because you find value in it in some way and so really we're encouraging you guys to take ownership of the opportunities that we already have on campus, as well as we're going to be working towards bolstering and adding some new things in the future that will hopefully engage the community as a whole.

KENNEDY DICKIE: I have two questions, the first one, you have been very open with numbers and finances, which I really appreciate. I don't know if this is an appropriate question, but what is the budget for these House Retreats now, looking at how expensive Fall Retreat was, what are you going to give ten houses to be able to cover the cost of these house retreats?

SHEAFFER: So the budget for houses to be based on the size of the house. So we're going to be giving money to houses per capita. It's going to be around, I believe three to four thousand for house, which works out to about half as much as what for Fall Retreat was, it cuts a lot out of the budget that way. And we’ll provide a good Retreat to a lot of houses. I know, I mean I worked with the House of Lewis for a long time, we have spent around that, a little less than that and some years and so it'll provide a good amount, it would be a good retreat but it still saves more than half off of what we used to spend on Fall Retreat.

KENNEDY DICKIE: And then my second question is coming into King’s last year, I’m a second-year here, I found it to be very very hard to meet people outside of your house. I feel like you get here for orientation and I’m in the house of SBA, and it’s just all of these SBA events, we don’t necessarily have a brother house, we aren’t too involved with our sister house, And then the only two times all the houses come together are Interregnum and Fall Retreat. And Interregnum is houses versus houses, it’s not the most comforting or exciting thing among houses, and that’s part of the beauty of Interregnum, friendly competition, but what are you planning to do to incorporate the houses with each other? Eliminating Fall Retreat is just going to make the competition more, make friendships not as strong?

SHEAFFER: Yeah for me, that is the biggest loss. That's the hardest part for me moving forward. What do wee do with that? And so I think it's an opportunity for all of us to to be creative with that, a few ways... the King's day away which were planning. I would love to see next year's cabinet think about that question as they're planning the day away. How do we get people to interact with people from other houses? So, whatever activities or events they playing during that, hopefully including mingling with other houses. I would also love to see our community give more of a push to Fall Picnic, which is all ten houses, and to see if that really take off it as more people showing up, more people getting involved, more people mingling with other houses, in ways that we can do that. And then I'd also love to see the helmsmen plan more inter-house activities events. I know Red and Green affair didn't happen this year, but I loved that as a model of a couple houses coming to get her to plan face for every house. Bonhoeffer in the past has done the Super Bowl party where they invite every house. I love ideas like that were one or two houses can come together, plan something for everybody. So it's not just not your silo inside your house.

BLAKE ASHLEY: My main concern is, and I’ve heard a lot of this, is that the burden of replacing fall retreat is now going to fall on the shoulders of the exec teams. What was a school and a cabinet plan event is now going to be up to exec teams to plan over their summers, and now I just heard, plan more events, and do RGA, which is killed Lewis and Thatcher's for 10 years running. I’m just wondering if you’ve ever considered taking some of that $50,000 you’re saving and consider giving the exec teams a raise.

DEAN LEEDY: Regarding the burden of planning those retreats, the house advisors are planning to be more involved, giving more life and being more intentional about that. So that is a shift. I can spend in the past, all of just the exec team to make it happen. Right? So the change this coming fall is that house advisors are going to be more present, more engaged, hopefully more helpful in that process and take some good some of the burden. Doesn’t mean they’re going to do it all, but they are going to work with the executive team. I think it’ll translate into more presence on those retreats. I’m the advisor to Churchill and I’ve never gone on the retreat. I plan to go this year, that's going to be a mental shift for me, to be more engaged in the community that way. 

SHEAEFFER: I would also add that like, you know historically, Lewis has done our house Retreat the weekend before Fall Retreat, Reagan has historically done theirs the weekend after Fall Retreat, and so there are houses that have done it very early on in the year, and it is doable and they were doing that on top of drama comp, and Fall Retreat and everything else going on at the beginning of the year. There is precedent for it being possible, for being beneficial even, Lewis and Reagan have done it a  number of years in a row, to where they see the value in continuing to put in the effort. We also recognize that that is some added pressure. Of course, we tried to take some pressure off by moving drama comp, by getting rid of fundraising, that sort of thing, but we are recognizing some of that pressure and we're changing how onboarding for new exec teams this year will look, some of the training that they'll get, some of the things that we’ll be asking of them and teaching them before they go on summer break. We are also restructuring some of the training in August for exec teams to allow time for planning their house retreats.

MADELYNN KAUFMANN: I have a few questions, some of them are about the logistics of the Day-Away. This summer, I had to plan an outing for my internship. It was 100 staff members at Coney Island, it was incredibly expensive. There were also not many opportunities to have community, to be able to hear each other, to speak, to enjoy a lot of things without spending a lot of money, so I’m wondering what kind of budget you’re planning on giving the Day-Away, considering it cost us for 100 people to get some food and wristbands, do you plan on providing those kinds of things, if you know Coney Island is the choice, or another close alternative location, do you plan on providing a large budget for that so community can be fostered there?

DEAN LEEDY: The budget was mostly for lunch that day. I'm not sure what you guys did, was it a company?

MADELYNN KAUFMANN: It was a non-profit.

DEAN LEEDY: Non-profit, yeah. So what we do is going to be local, so it’ll be less cost of transportation, right? I’m biased towards Governor’s Island because it’s easy to get to, it’s quiet, it’s a beautiful place to be, a lot of activities on the island are free basically, so I think that kind of outing is doable and then we had lunch provided as part of that experience. So that’s basically in a nutshell of what we are thinking.

MADELYNN KAUFMANN: My second question is, what kind of student perspective was sought in the initial decision to cancel Fall Retreat and then in choosing to compensate for some of the loss, and if student perspective wasn’t sought, why wasn’t it?

DEAN LEEDY: Yeah, we've looked, I mean, every year we do evaluations of Fall Retreat, we as in the King’s council, as you guys know, look at that are evaluations for the last...Fall Retreat began in 2000. So there was a time when it ceased for a couple years and then restarted again. So we've done what 18 Fall Retreats, so evaluations for all those. We've looked at all those, trends, you know, what students say about their experience, what the highlights were, the things that we're not achieving a one-trick formation piece of that. So we’ve really weighed student experience, student perspective on that... And to be frank, I heard things on both sides. Students saying this is this is the worst decision on planet Earth. Other students even this past week saying that this is a good decision, I don't like Fall Retreat that much, but not the typical experience. And then there were students saying that they were excited for the new opportunities that we are pursuing. So, I think there’s going to be a variety of student’s opinions around this, some of us care deeply about Fall Retreat. And I know that’s including you, you’re one of those [motioned at Madelynn]. So, to the point, we’ve looked at students, student experience, Fall Retreat evaluations, and so forth in making those decisions. 

SETH PATE: Fall Retreat allows students to see faculty outside their offices, and that’s been really cool. How does the college plan to, not mandate, but encourage faculty to be around for the Day-Away and be present with us?

JONATHAN SHEAFFER: I don’t have a lot to say to that.

DEAN LEEDY: Yeah, we are we're going to use a whip. [audience laughs] That's one of the things where want to invite the entire community including staff, faculty. And so we expect that many will want to be part of that. Now, I think some faculty has a long way to commute in so Saturday back in might be difficult for some of them, so I don't expect we'll have a hundred percent turn out, but if you think about Fall Retreat, we have on average, what twenty or so faculty and staff who are there? So, I would expect the same kind of involvement. I’ll bring my kids. I know Brian Brenberg will bring his kids, there’ll be families there, so I think we’ll have similar presence. 

JONATHAN SHEAFFER: We also, I mean during the conversation, the first proposed date for it was Labor Day weekend, and we nixed that because a lot of staff and faculty and families will be gone from the city during that time, soeven in scheduling at we're looking for the optimal weekend to include staff and faculty.

COLTON GOTWALS: I know you said it’s not just a financial decision, but if by some means either a donor or the student body raised the money left over post ticket sales and post what you are giving the houses right now, could Fall Retreat come back in the future? As you mentioned, you're giving like $3,500 on average to each house, I know it’s going to vary.

DEAN LEEDY: It’ll be an average of $3,000 per house, plus whatever the council grants, so it’ll end up being, yeah about right.

COLTON GOTWALS: And then you said you got $18,000 from ticket sales that only leaves $19,000 that would have to be raised. If someone donated that with an earmark saying this was for Fall Retreat, could we see that come back?

DEAN LEEDY: Uh, The math...not sure where you got the $19,000.

COLTON GOTWALS: You mentioned it was $72,000 for Fall Retreat, $18,000 for ticket sales-

DEAN LEEDY: Are you saying if we take back the money that we give the houses? 

COLTON GOTWALS: Right. Exactly. If we take back that money, assume we get the same amount for ticket sales, if we raised that last $19,000, could we see it come back?

DEAN LEEDY: I mean, yeah, this fall, we are committed to the plans and it’s an experiment, right? And we evaluate, see how goes, if it’s effective for our community, does it work, does it not work? But yeah, I kind of mentioned this, I don't think we are making a hundred year plan here. The question is what works for the community, and what is most effective, and if we have the means, if we decide, if we do this next year, and we think ‘you know what?’ Fall Retreat does something that we really can’t replace, other ways, and a donor comes along who has the means, and we can see that money, I would hope not just a one-off thing, but something that's durable and has longevity to it, then yeah. I think there's a possibility to do that.

MILES SINAGRA: The $19,000 that Colton was pulling from, that doesn't seem to be including the Day Away cost, and I also heard there may be a venue for drama comp, it’s not going to be here...so I’m thinking when you add up the cost for day away as well as the venue, then it ends up there just being a wash, and then it’s about the same price as Fall Retreat.

JONATHAN SHEAFFER: I guess you guys want clarification on the numbers. I'm going off of my head here, but, historically houses have received $1,000 for house retreats in the past. That's included in the houses are getting so to your 19 add another 10. So that's $29,000 that we are saving, and I think it's $30,000 that was set aside for the houses from that budget. And then it was two or three thousand each for the drama comp venue and the day away. So it ends up being about $3,500 I believe that we're spending. We are still saving about $3,700 minus ticket sales.

DEAN LEEDY: In essence, we are saving half the money. Half of $72,000 we are saving.

JONATHAN SHEAFFER: And then to speak out of ticket sales, for a number of years now, every year Fall Retreat is a stretch for a lot of students to make happen financially. So I'm excited for the opportunity to take that financial burden off of students having to pay $75 for Fall Retreat. There are still some question marks as to whether or not House Retreats will charge a ticket sale, but I know that seeing students pay $75 and the price of a House Retreat ticket, I’ve heard a lot of students not being able to afford that, or put themselves into not eating for a while because they bought tickets. So I am excited for the savings for the students as well as for the school.

EMLEE SANDERFORD: Just from as a helmsman, like building community kind of perspective, how are you going to help exec teams next year not feel like they have to match...like maybe spiritual expectations of Fall Retreat, or just like that expectation of feeling like maybe upperclassmen are going to think like, oh now our House Retreat is going to feel like a Fall Retreat...kind of thing and help kind of meet those expectations that students are going to have going into those. Because then they’re going to be kind of disappointed, because I think they are just on two totally different levels, and then you have like maybe even a kind of shift in community relations  because people will be like ‘well it’s not the same…’ and you may see a drop in unity.

JONATHAN SHEAFFER: The way I'm thinking about it is that Fall Retreat is over. That there is not a Fall Retreat anymore, and now we are doing just House Retreats. And so when I'm comparing my House Retreat next year to this year, I'm not going to be comparing it to Fall Retreat, I’m going to be comparing it to the House Retreat I was on. And I know not everybody will do that. I do think it will take some time to transition for people to get used to the new normal. It'll take us time to get used to the new normal. I'm going to miss Fall Retreat next year. I think there will be growing pains in that, it's hard to make the transition, but I'll give it a couple years and then we'll get there and it'll be good.