Student Activities Update

By Isaiah Banwart on 2/18/21

A new Bags Tournament has been scheduled for March 3rd with three Casey’s gift cards for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place. Bill Lapczenski and Jeremy Ward, Iowa Lakes’ director of auxiliary services and housing coordinator respectively, were eager to advocate on behalf of student activities.

Lapczenski explained the funding model briefly. “When you enroll in school there’s a student activity fee that gets charged per credit hour and then that goes into a pot of money. They slice it up and then there’s a portion that goes to the music department; a portion that goes to the athletic department; a portion went to the school newspaper when we had it; and, of course, a portion goes to the student senate for student activities. All of those are parts of the puzzle that make an institution like ours roll. After that, most of the programs have clubs so we try and give back to them so they can do their club activities.” Iowa Lakes has over thirty clubs that require funding along with student senate and department allocations.

Ward quickly determined the value of student activities when asked. “My take on student activities is that there’s a lot of different reasons why I think they’re important. The biggest thing is that students are paying fees for student activities. It’s an opportunity for the student senate to bring in different events while working with other clubs and organizations to help bring in entertainment, good causes to the campus, and that kind of thing. Also, just getting people together for the social events is a great way to meet people. People say friends you make in college are lifelong friends.”

Lapczenski agreed with his colleague and launched into detail about the meaningfulness of these experiences. “We also have the whole convocation series where we try and expose students to things they normally wouldn’t do. It’s a big world out there and where we live is kind of sheltered. We had a string quartet come in one time. How many kids around here have listed to some guys with a cello and a couple violins play? They might like it, they might not, but they’ve been exposed to it and that’s important. You also mentioned the networking thing. Personally, I have friends I went to college with a long, long, long time ago that are still close friends. You never know where you’re gonna end up in life but you and someone you meet in college might end up working together. Or they might know somebody that knows somebody. It’s all that networking once you get out of college.”

The rest of the semester looks busy for Lapczenski. “We’re having a bags tournament. We’re giving out gift cards to either the local convenience or grocery store. Every year we invite our sheriffs department, police department, fire department, and emergency medical technicians to a breakfast at the college just to say thank you, not only for what they do for the college but for the community. We’ve done the Adopt a Highway program for, I don’t know, twelve or fifteen years. We have four miles of highway that we clean as a community service project. We’ll be doing that this Spring.”

Ward concluded the discussion with mention of another convocation in March. “There’s a speaker coming in who went to college but ended up being involved with sex trafficking. She’s going to talk about the warning signs to look for when you think you or someone else is in trouble.”