Fall Retreat and House Athletic Competitions Among Proposals Discussed at Council Meeting
| Photo courtesy of the King’s Council
The King’s Council unveiled the agenda and proposals ahead of next year in a council meeting held on Monday, May 3. Among proposals on the agenda, the Council and House presidents spent a large portion of time on the proposal to reestablish fall retreat, which was eliminated last year.
During the meeting, which was held in the City Room and virtually over Zoom, the cabinet also discussed space and funding for upgrading MCA film equipment, reintroducing an athletically-oriented House competition and repainting floors 5 and 6 to be more consistent with King’s official colors.
In the first order of business, Abigail Roth (Director of Student Organizations), announced new student org submissions, including an acapella org, culinary org and potential King’s radio org. The cabinet also moved to nominate House presidents Olivia Staggs (President of the House of Thatcher), Connor Kopko (President of the House of Bonhoeffer) and Reagan Stanley (President of the House of Queen Elizabeth 1) to serve on the Student Orgs committee.
Kylia Ford (Director of Student Events) announced her events committee for the 2021-2022 school year, which will include Aidan Kurth, Liz Piazza, Sam Klozik, Abigail Adams and Addisyn Eggar.
The first proposal discussed during the council meeting was the motion to bring back King’s late tradition of Fall Retreat. This year, King’s introduced two day away events in the fall and spring to substitute for Fall Retreat.
“The basic gist of this is that we’re explaining what Fall Retreat means to this community, why specifically this year we’ve noticed its absence and how we plan to try and make [reestablishing Fall Retreat] happen,” Student Body President Brent Buterbaugh said, detailing his reason for pushing forth the proposal.
The college cited budget cuts as the main reason behind the annual King’s tradition being axed. Monday’s meeting agenda acknowledged this concern and included a plan that reestablishes Fall Retreat to take place on the weekend of September 16-18 that is currently reserved for individual House retreats, reallocate funding earmarked for House retreats and day away events and include the Council, Cabinet, Refuge and Spiritual Life Associate teams in planning Fall Retreat.
Spiritual life has always been a main facet of Fall Retreat.
“Fall Retreat presents an opportunity to set the spiritual tone for the school year in a way that engages each and every member of our community: staff, faculty and student,” the agenda from Monday’s council meeting states.
“Fall retreat has the unique ability to set the tone for spiritual life at King’s. It is a time for us to all align and set our sights on God as a student body, as houses, and individually,” Director of Spiritual Life, Moses Kazanjian said. “A large part of my role as DoSL this year will be building up our SLA’s as leaders so that they can better serve their house with the authority they are given. I see our SLA’s being a major part of how we maintain momentum before, during, and after Fall Retreat.”
Regarding the budget for Fall Retreat, the meeting agenda includes a breakdown from the 2019 Fall Retreat Budget, as well as Blake Ashley’s new budget breakdown that was created during his 2020 Student Body President campaign.
“The administration cited a $72,000 price tag for the event, with facility rentals and transportation constituting an overwhelming majority of the total,” the meeting agenda states. “This cost can be significantly reduced by renting a different camp that is less expensive, and by choosing a location that is closer to the city.”
Jonathan Sheaffer, Director of Student Development, attended Monday’s meeting to answer questions and provide feedback on Fall Retreat in the past.
“Personally, I would love to see Fall Retreat return, but I would caution that a camp that costs $20,000 less than where we’ve been going, you will feel $20,000 less in the beds, the bathrooms, the food, the available facilities and all of that,” Sheaffer said. “It sounds really good, but I don’t think anybody’s been to this camp and seen what it’s looked like, so just a word of caution there.”
The Fall Retreat budget from 2019 and Ashley’s proposed new budget can be found here.
The second motion proposed that King’s reserve space and form a budget for student film projects and MCA Majors to be known as the MCA Media Studio. Christopher Davis, Dr. Joshua Kinlaw’s student worker, joined the meeting to advocate for the changes.
“I can definitely foresee there being some hoops we have to jump through with the finances and selling that. Can I put it [film equipment] on Craigslist and meet someone out in New York and sell the stuff? I will be the media assistant managing this closet through the next year,” Davis said.
Since the Media Lab has become virtually unavailable to students in MCA, the proposal requests better film equipment and a space that can be used as the Media Studio that MCA students can utilize. All current equipment and gear is housed in a closet in the Lion’s Den, which blocks traffic coming in and out of the area.
| 2021-2022 King’s Council: Cabinet on Top, House presidents on Bottom.
From left to right: Makenna McCoy (Director of Communications), Noah Ebel (Director of Finance), Kylia Ford (Director of Student Events), Brent Buterbaugh (Student Body President), Abigail Roth (Director of Student Organizations), Moses Kazanjian (Director of Spiritual Life), Olivia Staggs (Thatcher), Benjamin Ashley (Lewis), Emily Smyth (Truth), Mattie Winburn (Barton), Max Pleban (Reagan), Luke Gainey (Churchill), Kelsey Logan (ten Boom), Connor Kopko (Bonhoeffer), Reagan Stanley (QE 1) and Catherine Blanco (SBA).
With King’s House competitions like Interregnum and GPA Comp leaning towards the academic side of King’s, the third motion of the evening introduced a plan to organize an athletically-geared House event for athletes to compete in their House. Possible ideas for the event could include ultimate frisbee, dodgeball, basketball, powder puff or a field day. This proposal would create a way for House athletes to have a competition modeled towards them.
The last topic of the night suggested the orange columns on the fifth and sixth floors be repainted to King’s colors, to better match the aesthetic of campus.
“Although a good portion of the sixth floor is painted a shade of blue, the college has random columns that are painted orange,” the agenda states. “In order to uphold the professionalism of the institution, we believe repainting these columns and walls is necessary.”
To submit council feedback on the proposals in the agenda, follow this link to the form.