KYLE KITOWSKI | STAFF REPORTER
The motto is “eight before you graduate.”
This refers to the Butler University Cultural Requirement, requiring students to attend eight events before graduating from the university. These events include artistic performances, seminars and public lectures.
The University may withhold a student’s degree if he or she fails to attend the expected eight events.
In the past, a student would get a Butler student identification card scanned at an event to earn the BCR credit.
However, there is growing concern among faculty that students go to events, get their identification cards scanned and then leave without actually staying for the entire show.
“It has always been the expectation that students would attend the entire event,” Elizabeth Mix, faculty director of the core curriculum, said. “We have been working on this issue and expect that beginning next fall we will be able to scan in at the beginning of the event and scan out at the end of the event.”
The University had previously tried to implement a similar system; however, technical difficulties and issues with data management hindered these efforts.
Views on the BCR vary among the student body on Butler’s campus.
Sophomore Aaron Smith, an interactive media major, has completed seven of his eight required cultural events.
“The idea of scanning and leaving has crossed my mind,” Smith said. “But most of the events I have been to were for a class I was taking at that time. These were things we would discuss in class or had to write a paper about, so I always stayed for the whole thing. And they were usually interesting, anyway.”
However, another sophomore, an accounting major who preferred to remain unnamed, had a different view.
“Personally, I don’t see the value in these events, which is why I usually try to leave early. I have never been to one that I enjoyed,” the student said.
“The aim of the Butler Cultural Requirement is to engage students in these most valuable and exciting learning opportunities, and to encourage students to develop habits of participation in artistic and cultural events that will lead to lifelong engagement with the creative arts and public intellectual life,” according to Butler’s website.