Written by Blake Mathews
Three weeks after Harding students learned they would not be disciplined for buying tickets in Arkansas’ new lottery, President David Burks reversed the policy. His chapel speech on Friday, Oct. 16, explained his reasons for banning lottery play on and off campus and attempted to clear up some misconceptions.
In his chapel speech, Burks apologized to the student body for failingto “connect the dots” between not actively disciplining students for buying lottery tickets and granting the lottery itself a kind of tacit approval.
“My intention was to express in our policy the reality that it will be very difficult to enforce any prohibition against the lottery,” Burks said in his speech. However, some students and several news outlets took this to mean that Harding did not equate the lottery with gambling, which is prohibited in the Student Handbook.
“I failed to anticipate how people would respond,” Burks said in an interview on Wednesday. “My intent from the very beginning was Harding does not approve gambling; Harding therefore does not approve the lottery because the lottery, by anyone’s definition, is gambling.”
The initial policy was a result of what Burks called “very flawed” thinking. He considered it a “non-issue” at Harding, as most students would likely not participate. The only official decision that came out of Burks’ office was that the university should not “try to keep up with who might buy a ticket at some gas station somewhere.”
Before that policy appeared in the Oct. 2 issue of The Bison, Burks had no plans to say anything regarding the lottery. However, he said, seeing the story in print made him aware of the connections people would make. The “non-issue” became a misunderstanding that Burks immediately knew would have to be corrected.
“Without receiving a single call or a single letter from anybody who was upset … I was upset from Day One,” Burks said.
One misunderstanding was that Harding had “sold out in exchange for scholarship money,” Burks said in his chapel speech. Although he said the purpose behind the scholarship, encouraging Arkansans to pursue higher education, was positive, the university would not and never did endorse the lottery aspect.
As for whether or not Harding would honor scholarships that were partially created with lottery revenue, Burks said that the decision to accept a college scholarship belongs to individual students, not the university.
Burks closed his chapel speech by acknowledging that not everyone would agree with the decision to officially ban the lottery at Harding. However, he said he felt the right decision was being made “based on what Harding stands for.”
“It is important to me that all people, both here and away from campus, know that Harding University stands firmly against gambling,” he said.
Burks said that the Student Handbook may be revised next year to better reflect the school’s position on the lottery, but the prohibition will remain. Students caught buying lottery tickets will face “a sequential progression of sanctions beginning with a written and/or verbal reprimand.”
