Written by Steven Chandler
When students return in the fall they will notice a different atmosphere at 9 a.m. It was announced in January that the Benson will undergo some changes that will allow for one chapel in the fall semester.
“I love the idea of going back to one chapel,” Harding University president Dr. David Burks said. “It’s better on the student body to be together. It’s better for academic scheduling purposes because we are not utilizing two different hours for chapel. It’s better for the speakers because they only speak once, and I just think it produces an overall better atmosphere for us.”
In order to make one chapel possible in the fall, approximately 150 new seats are going to be added to the Benson. Most of them will be placed near the back on the first floor with some in the balcony. The university is making sure to be in compliance with the fire code when adding the new seats. Currently there are 3,547 seats in the Benson Auditorium. With the new additions seating capacity will be around 3,700.
“Dr. Burks wanted the maximum amount of seating,” Danny DeRamus, director of the Physical Resources Department, said. “If we could have gotten 500 more we would have. This is the maximum amount we could get in there.”
Fixing the two chapels issue has been a priority for a while, but coming up with a solution has been hard to do. According to DeRamus they have been looking into many options to fix this problem for a while. Burks said that this fall they really got serious about looking for a solution.
“My decision and the decision of the cabinet this fall when we discussed it was if the difference between what we can do in one chapel verses two is only about 150 or 160 students, why don’t we look at a way to see if we couldn’t go back to one chapel by adding that many seats to the current auditorium,” Burks said.
With the Benson almost at capacity the question has to be asked: how long will this solution work? Will 150 seats make that much of a difference? Burks said he thinks so.
“It will all depend upon what happens to undergraduate enrollment but my anticipation is that while total enrollment of the university will continue to go up I think the total undergraduate enrollment will remain about where it is,” Burks said. “As long as it does then we’ll be able to have one chapel in the fall, but we will be full.”
Adding new seats is not the only work that the Benson will go through. To make sure the new chairs match the current ones, they have planned to reupholster all the current chairs. According to DeRamus, the Benson is going to go more with the Harding colors. The chairs are going to have more of a brownish-gold color to them. In addition, the carpet in the aisles is going to be a mixture of black and gold, similar to the carpet in the Heritage hallways. The cost for the seat prices are not set in stone, but it is expected to cost around $65 dollars to reupholster a seat and $214 to create a new seat.
According to Burks, recovering all the seats has needed to be done for at least five or seven years; now is just a good time to do it with the new additions. DeRamus says that he has a small window to get this work done, between July 10 and Aug. 8. Burks thought that the only event this project might affect will be the July commencement.
“I think the students will be surprised when they get back,” Burks said. “I think it will look nice, clean and fresh and be a nice addition. We are also planning to do some work this summer on the sound system for the entire auditorium as well. So I think people will be surprised when they get back, and it should be ready in August.”
