Ever wonder why music only plays from Zwemer on Preview Fridays and during the holiday season? Next Tuesday, Dec. 4, is your opportunity to ask faculty and staff this and any other question you can think of.
Just introduced in recent years, chapel closes out each semester with an “Nything Goes” session. These chapel programs give students the opportunity to ask a live panel their most pressing questions on literally anything, from Celeste’s boots to the perceived lack of therapists in the Wellness Center.
The panel has typically included faculty, residence staff, wellness staff and campus ministry staff. Questions are moderated through the website sli.do, which allows students to anonymously post questions in real time while voting for their favorite questions to make it to the top.
The top questions are the ones typically posed to the panel, although moderators have been known to bounce good questions straight to the top.
This opportunity offers two chapel credits, like a normal Tuesday chapel. It also gives students the opportunity to voice concerns about campus, which might remain contained in complaints to peers as well as ask professional thinkers and leaders questions troubling them. Theological questions, social issues and politics are all fair game.
Past questions have included questions on the controversial group Sioux County Conservatives, clarification on Reformed theology and questions about Northwestern’s history. Students have also shown an interest in the daily lives of professors.
Not only does this event benefit the student population, it’s given the administration insight into what students are thinking, worrying about and wishing for.
“I’m excited to be able to have our questions answered. Hopefully the real questions we want, not a lot of picking and choosing,” said junior Liz Ellis.
Junior Emily Weber added, “I think the Nything Goes chapel will be a really good way to start conversations that are meaningful and beneficial to students.”
And that’s just the hope of events like Ned Talks, Ngage lectures and Nything Goes—NW wants to be a safe place for students to foster deep, meaningful conversations and transform the campus and world one vulnerable conversation at a time.
Additionally, senior Emmalyne Farwell said, “I’m excited to hear what questions other students have. I think it’s a good way to initiate conversations between students and staff or faculty.”
This event is one more way NW hopes to foster conversations with peers as well as conversations between students and faculty or staff.
In the world of social media, people are finding themselves talking face-to-face less and less. NW takes a whole new approach to using technology by utilizing it in a way to actually encourage face-to-face conversations that probe the deep questions about existence, God, living in the world, treating our neighbors the way Christ would reacting to politics and more.
Students, take a break from studies on Tuesday to engage the faculty and staff in questions of your choosing. Students should come with their phone, ready to ask questions, vote on their favorites and hear from wise staff at 11:05 a.m. Tuesday, Dec. 4, Christ Chapel.
