beyond the green

It’s coming closer and closer to the end of the year, which means the music department has concerts galore in the next two weeks. The final Wind Ensemble concert was last night, Sunday is the Masterworks Choral concert, next Tuesday is Chamber Orchestra, and next Wednesday is Jazz on the Green.

All of those are looking to be amazing performances, but I’m going to do a plug for the concert that it’s too late to see. I’m actually a member of the Wind Ensemble, but that has nothing to do with how amazed I was at the concert last night. The pieces we played made the concert…just…amazing. There’s not really any other way to put it.

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Why, they’re both some of the topics in the URICA symposium. This year’s URICA symposium took place today, Saturday, April 30, and it was a rousing success. What is URICA? URICA is an organization that promotes undergraduate research, and at the symposium many students’ research was presented to the general public. This was more than simply a seminar presentation, as most of the research done on campus over the past year was presented and open to the general public. It’s a fantastic mingling of students, family, faculty, and community members.

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This past weekend, a group of Bethel students had the opportunity to attend the Pascha (Easter) service at St. George’s Orthodox Christian Cathedral. St. George’s is part of the Eastern Orthodox tradition, which includes Russian, Greek, Armenian, Antiochan, and several other Orthodox churches. The service began at 11pm and concluded at about 2am and was a marathon of liturgy, standing up, and incense.

It began with the choir singing an opening hymn after which all the lights were shut off and the bishop began chanting liturgy. He then lit a candle from the candelabra at the front of the church and passed it to the priests and friars, who went down the aisle and lit the candles of the parishioners. It was really beautiful, getting to watch the church slowly light up and being able to see the elaborate paintings on the ceiling and walls.

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Last week classes were cancelled on Wednesday for the annual Service Day. Students could sign up for a variety of projects on campus as well as a trip to Camp Mennoscah that I was lucky enough to be on.

The biggest project was the cleanup of the Kidron Canal, which runs through campus in between the athletic and academic buildings. President White was really excited about this project because it would help tear down the physical barrier between the athletic and academic sides of campus. The football team and many other students worked on it, and it’s an impressive change.

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This past weekend was one of the best I have had at college so far. It wasn’t just because I was finally done with a paper and a project that had been causing me a lot of stress, but it was also jam-packed with fun stuff.

Saturday night was the Bubbert Awards, where students can submit films for judging. There were only 4 films and honestly all were very good. Hopefully they will all be up on YouTube or somewhere soon. The winner was a Harry Potter trailer of the whole series set at Bethel. That one was especially cool because it involved so many students as extras and starred Bethel faculty and staff as professors.

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