SAMANTHA BLONS
Assistant News Editor
A Wednesday morning at Pepperdine will no longer include “convocation” for thousands of Seaver College students.
However, it will still mean a weekly trek down to Firestone Fieldhouse, students swiping ID cards for credit, the acapella sounds of Pepperdine’s Won-By-One and a guest speaker’s words of faith and spirituality. Wednesday morning convocation, the most widely attended program in the convocation series, has a new name this year: “chapel.”
The name change is part of an effort to “re-brand” the Wednesday morning program, said Christopher Collins, convocation and student-led ministries coordinator and a 2002 alum.
“‘Chapel’ is more descriptive of what takes place at that time,” Collins said. “We’re hoping it will show prospective students and speakers and the Pepperdine community in general what takes place at that time.”
Seaver Dean David Baird said the student activities staff changed convocation’s name both to honor Pepperdine’s Christian mission and also “to take us back to our roots.” The weekly spiritual assembly had been called “chapel” for most of Pepperdine’s history, he said, and this is just a restoration of that tradition.
“We’ve been moving in that direction over the last several years, and it makes sense that it should be more than a gathering of students,” Baird said.
Collins said despite the new name, the Wednesday program itself will not change, either in the way his staff operates or with the speakers they recruit. As he has been doing for the past few years, Collins and his staff will continue to ask speakers to present topics from a Biblical or theological perspective.
“We’re not asking them to hold a sermon, and we’re not going to have a church service,” Collins said. “Now we’re just trying to find a more descriptive name for what we’ve been doing for the last three years.”
However, some students do not think the term “chapel” truly describes the Wednesday morning program.
“When I think of ‘chapel,’ I think of more students involved in worship, so it doesn’t describe what convo was – but it could,” said senior Caitlin Lawrence. “At other schools, chapel is an amazing time of worship, and I’d like to see that happen at Pepperdine.”
Sophomore Kristen Anderson thinks the name “chapel” gives the program a more religious connotation, and makes it sound more like a church service.
“I think ‘convo’ is a much better description,” Anderson said. “In my mind, a ‘convocation’ is open-minded and more encouraging of free thought. I think the change will make a lot of people more hesitant to come because they’ll think it will be more religious.”
Anderson also thinks the name change will be confusing to some students, because Campus Ministry already hosts a student-led chapel service in Stauffer Chapel on Sunday nights. This weekly worship service includes acapella singing, a student speaker and communion, but does not count for Convocation credit.
Another change in this year’s chapel-convocation series is launch of a spiritual mentoring program. The new program will pair each student with a faculty or staff member who will mentor them on Christian values and beliefs. Students who would like to join the program can e-mail chris.collins@pepperdine.edu, and they will be paired with one of the 30 mentors who have already agreed to participate. Student Activities officials are still building the list of mentors, and Collins hopes to have at least 100 faculty members participating in the future.
08-27-2007