Wednesday's Council meeting began with a prayer from Lewis president, Fisher Derderian. The primary themes of this meeting were the state of House budgets, fundraising, and updates about next week's Fall Retreat.
The SBP discussed the benevolence fund for Fall Retreat. He informed the presidents that the Council has only less than $100 in the fund, but he and the Cabinet had recently sent an email to faculty and staff to ask for donations. Expecting only a few hundred dollars from the faculty, he asked the House presidents to ask their alumni and upperclassmen for donations towards their respective Houses.
The SBP then announced his State of the College address, which will occur on October 29th at noon in the City Room.
The SBP then began a discussion about House budgets and House fundraising. He admitted that fundraising for Houses is much more difficult than it appears, stating that Houses can't fundraise too much money for broad purposes due to rules that the Office of Advancement has set on the fundraising system. He also presented the dilemma when it comes to alumni donations because there is no current system outside of King's jurisdiction which allows for these types of donations. If an alumni from a House wishes to donate to their House, it must coincide with a specific House fundraising effort for only that academic year. There's no fund where House exec teams can simply pull money from which alumni are allowed to donate to.
QE1 brought up the question as to how does King's want Houses that are financially self-sufficient while yet restraining the Houses with fundraising and donation regulations. Members of the Cabinet expressed that nobody in the King's institution is against House self-sufficiency, but some members of the King's administration are fearful of the idea of a self-sufficient House(s) who cannot be "controlled" by the administration. Ten Boom pointed out that before the Houses can even think about sufficiency, each of the Houses "need to define what the Houses are." She argued that if House members, even exec teams, can't agree on what the purpose of the Houses are, how will they expect anyone outside of the House to donate to an institution which has no clear meaning?
Truth asked the rest of the Council how will the relationship between the Houses and the school look like once the Houses reach their financial self-sufficiency. Reagan believes that the relationship will not be affected at all, stating that members of the Houses will still be involved with the school at large. The SBP agreed, saying that "without King's, there would be no Houses." Reagan concluded that King's students will always be involved and invest in the school and House communities because "students are [always] yearning for ownership of something."
After the House budget/fundraising discussion, the other Cabinet members gave their reports.
The Director of Student Events announced that the location for Fall Picnic is... TBA. She also expressed her excitement for the fact that the school has decided to put three weekends into one, referring to Fall Picnic, Homecoming, and Parent's Weekend all occurring on the same weekend (October 2nd-4th).
The Director of Spiritual Life talked about the success of the first Refuge (Aug. 27), which had an official attendance of 133 students (through the "Check I'm Here" system). He also informed the Council of his meetings with the Spiritual Life Committee.
The Director of Communications updated the Council on the number of people signed up for Fall Retreat (as of 6:30pm on Sept. 2nd). He stated that 120 of the freshmen/first-years had signed up, and a total of 225 students had signed up.
The Director of Student Orgs motioned to have the new student org budget approved, and after brief debate about certain bylaws affecting the creation of the budget, the budget was unanimously approved.
The meeting was then adjourned.
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