By Collin Kall ’21
News Editor
Exit 17 now stands alongside fifteen other clubs in holding “Executive Council” status after a recent unanimous Gordon College Student Association vote. Exit 17 is now officially recognized as an indispensable club by GCSA.
Executive Councils are those clubs that GCSA has a vested interest in maintaining year after year. They are clubs deemed essential to the student body as a whole: to lose them would be a loss, and as such GCSA gives autonomy to those “Executive Council” clubs. GCSA will go out of its way to support these clubs..
“The executive council is the the group of GCSA sponsored organizations which we see as most influential and impactful on campus. The leaders are compensated, and nominated by the GCSA president. In short they are the clubs that we want to make sure still exist from year to year,” said GCSA President Davis Metzger in an email.
Many Executive Council clubs receive higher levels of funding because the work required to maintain such clubs is significantly higher than the average club; the leaders of clubs in the Executive Council receive a paycheck from GCSA because of the extensive work required to run the club.
For example, The Tartan is an Executive Council because the functions it performs are seen as essential by GCSA. The editor-in-chief and managing editor receive paychecks because they might put in twenty to thirty hours of work a week into the paper.
Bradley Boucher, at the March 5, 2018 GCSA meeting, argued that the two primary coordinators behind Exit 17 put an astonishing amount of work into each show, and they as such deserve monetary compensation. Each show requires dozens of hours of work, from set design to script writing to recording.
A sentiment echoed throughout the March 5th meeting was that clubs should not obtain executive council status easily. Sophomore class representative Sam Toavs expressed concern that clubs are being added to the executive council too readily; earlier this year The Hypernikon, Gordon’s yearbook, was added to the executive council. Toavs was concerned that an influx of clubs into the Council could cheapen or lessen its importance.
Nonetheless, Exit 17’s influence and popularity could not be ignored. Several members of GCSA noted that Exit 17’s quality has markedly improved, and that nearly every show sells out quickly.
“They are an organization which has had consistently high levels of performance and reaches a large audience on campus routinely. They are rivaled only by CEC and the Tartan (maybe Scot Radio) in their audience size. They have produced good content and the Forum felt that they deserved the recognition that comes with the Executive Council status,” Metzger commented.
Exit 17 is here to stay.
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