I don’t just like bowling. I live for bowling. It’s what keeps me rolling through the week. When Friday comes, 100 of my closest Guilford friends and I make our merry way to the AMF to ring in the new weekend.
We did it last Friday, and we’ll do it again next Friday. It’s a ritual. It’s rejuvenating. It’s only two dollars.
And soon it will be no more.
The bowling club has nearly exhausted its budget. Save your tissues; it gets sadder. When the president of the bowling club went to Senate to plead for more money, she got a pretty cold reception. I know: I was there, along with ten or so other bowling-enthusiasts.
The point is not so much that Senate offered her only $1,300 of the $3,600 needed to keep the club alive for the rest of the semester.
What bothered me about the whole ordeal is the snide way in which one Senator asked, “If people love bowling so much, why wouldn’t they be willing to pay for it out of their own pocket?”
Oh I’m sorry, I thought I was already paying out of my own pocket. Ordinarily it would cost every bowler nine dollars a week to cover the price of three games and shoe rentals. The club budget supplements seven of those dollars, so that its 100 members only have to scrounge up two dollars a week. This two dollars a week is in addition to the $160 student activity fee that we all forked over at the beginning of the year.
Unfortunately, given the extraordinary popularity of the bowling club this year, the budget can’t support this arrangement for more than four more weeks. Even more unfortunate is that enthusiasm and love don’t spawn dollar bills. I don’t know many students who can afford to pay nine dollars every week, no matter how much they love bowling.
This is becoming a recurring cycle in the history of the bowling club. At the time of its inception, it was free. This was plausible because the club’s membership was pretty tiny. But then the club exploded, ran out of money, and had to start charging five dollars a week. Well, people couldn’t keep that up for very long, so the club membership dwindled again.
How ridiculous is it that a club should suffer because of its popularity? When was the last time you saw 100 Guilford students show up for anything consistently and with joy?
According to the explanation of fees outlined on the college website, “The student activity fee is charged to all residential students and full-time day students, and administered by the student government to cover the budget of certain student organizations in which all students may participate or from which they receive benefits.”
One hundred people – one hundred constituents – think it would be swell if our money went to support bowling. Senate does represent us, right?