Members of Student Senate’s Legends Center Dress Code Committee recently began tabling to change the dress code in the Legends Fitness for Life Center, after participating in a meeting with leaders of Luther’s athletic department on October 23.
The Legend Center Dress Code ad hoc committee is made up of Senate Vice President Natalie Neff (‘24), Secretary Hannah Roesler (‘25), Senior Class Representative Kiley Nolan (‘24) and Diversity Representative for Gender and Sexuality Cristian Chavez (‘24). The committee is advocating for changes to be made to the dress code for the Legends Fitness for Life Center, the weight training facility in the Regents Center.
On October 23, committee members met with Director of Intercollegiate Athletics Renae Hartl and Associate Director of Athletics Adam Carpenter to discuss the dress code. The meeting revealed that the dress code has been in place and enforced since the Legends Center opened in 2000 due to fear of mRSA and other skin disease outbreaks. In an email statement provided to CHIPS, Carpenter said skin disease has been an issue at Luther in the past.
“There have been cases involving skin diseases on this campus in the past,” Carpenter said in an email. “The dress code is part of a series of proactive steps the school takes to help reduce the risk as much as possible as no method is 100% preventative.”
Carpenter was not able to specifically disclose to CHIPS how prevalent the issue of skin disease has been at Luther or at other American Rivers Conference (ARC) schools because historical outbreak data is private medical information.
Roesler explained that the primary concerns discussed in the meeting were sanitation, the perspectives of the Luther community on the Legends dress code, and the Committee’s proposed changes. While she did not believe the meeting to be as successful as the committee had hoped it would be, she did say that the Committee had planned their next step.
“Although the meeting did not yield the productivity we had hoped for, we have decided to initiate efforts to gather opinions from both students and staff regarding the current Legends dress code,” Roesler said.
These “efforts” include tabling sessions outside of the CAF on October 23 and 24 and outside of the Legends Center on October 25 and October 30. Their goal was to gain student signatures from those in support of changing the dress code. As of October 30, the committee has received 298 student signatures and 30 staff signatures. The committee also created a survey that was sent to the Student Bulletin and a survey that was sent to the staff and faculty. 80 students and 30 staff members filled out their respective surveys.
“Our objective is to engage the entire campus community in our survey to ensure we obtain an accurate representation of everyone’s sentiments,” Roesler said. “Following this data collection, we will schedule a follow-up meeting with cabinet members and the Director of Athletics to present our findings.”
According to Roesler, the Legends Center is the only place on campus with an enforced dress code. As it stands, members of the campus community, athletic team participants or otherwise, who use the facility must wear a full t-shirt with sleeves that ensures that there is no skin contact with the equipment upholstery.
In other Senate News, during the General Meeting on October 26, Senators were tasked with approving an amended budget. Treasurer Sophie Bierlein’s (‘24) original budget allotted $13,000 for the fall semester funding of student organizations; however, only $11,512 of that was used. The unused money was reallocated to the student grant fund, raising it from $3,000 to $4,400.
Bierlein also discovered that Senate no longer pays for Luther’s New York Times subscription, which freed up $2,500 for reallocation. The Executive Board decided to allocate $600 of it to sponsoring two large families for Christmas, which includes the purchasing of winter gear and toys. The rest of the funding has yet to be reallocated.
Following a description of the changes made to the budget, Bierlein motioned to approve it, Council for Faith and Life Representative Kjerstin Halverson (‘24) seconded the motion, and the Senate unanimously approved the budget. Bierlein also explained to the Senate that all student organization funding has been issued to each organization’s bank account as of October 23.
“I have done everything I humanly can on my end, so if there’s an issue, student [organizations] can talk to [Accounting Assistant Katrina Nicholls] in Financial Services,” Bierlein said.
Later in the meeting, Communications Committee Team Leader Solvei Christopherson (‘25) also led an activity that broke Senators up into small groups to discuss how they were feeling about the 2023-24 Senate term. Ad Hoc Committees were also given time to meet.
Student Senate will meet again on November 2 at 9:45 a.m. in the Mott Room of the Dahl Centennial Union.
