Cultural events requirements halved after faculty vote
SHAY CARLSON, STAFF WRITER
Photo courtesy of Shay Carlson
For many North Greenville students, a love/hate relationship seems to surround the eight semesters of Cultural Events that students have been required to take in order to graduate since the program�s inception. Luckily, the relationship between cultural events and students is about to become less daunting. The total requirement for cultural events has now been halved beginning with the Fall 2017 semester.
Michael Weaver, NGU Fine Arts professor and cultural events coordinator, helped to shed some light on the new requirements. Moving forward, �the requirement now will be that the cultural event semesters be done in the first two years� stated Weaver; �It goes into effect in the fall, so everyone enrolled in cultural events this semester will be required to complete this semester�s cultural events and pass in order to graduate, even if it’s their fifth or sixth semester�.
The sudden amendment to the cultural events requirement was brought forward for several reasons, the first of which was that unnecessary behavior was occurring during the programs. �Student behavior during cultural events has been less than appropriate and we were looking at ways to be helpful with that�, explained Weaver. �The other reasoning behind this is that we have multiple students go out on internships their senior year and in order to alleviate any difficulty for them to go to cultural events it was easier to reduce the cultural event requirement,� he added.
While students transferring into NGU will still be required to complete four semesters regardless of their graduation year, the cultural event load has been lightened for most third and fourth-year students.
Though the number of required cultural events will stay at three per semester, the cultural event program hopes to make the cultural event experience positive and enriching once again. �We still want to have cultural events available for the students and as a requirement for graduation, but we figured that reducing it to half would alleviate the tension that students might feel for the cultural event program�, said Weaver.
