Jocelyn Fowler
Reporter
Rockwall senior Nick Pokorny’s building a better Baylor bowling alley legislation passed at Thursday evening’s student senate meeting, but it left a few spares standing in its wake.
The proposed legislation passed with the vote of 33 senators, but there were eight senators who could not be convinced that Pokorny’s idea to rebuild and upgrade the bowling lanes lost last spring was practical.
Pokorny’s conceptual bowling alley would provide recreational and academic benefits to students as well as offer the potential to add another NCAA sport to the Baylor athletic program.
“We want to make sure that when we build a new facility it’s not just going to be this way and if one day we have to change it- if we one day want a bowling team-we wouldn’t have to tear parts out of it and shut it down,” explains Pokorny. “We were thinking how can we reconstruct the bowling alley to be viable long term.”
It was pokorny’s insistence that the bowling alley be built to NCAA caliber to accommodate the possible bowling team that left some senators standing once his bowl had been made. Senators worried that the potential of creating an NCAA team was not concrete enough to justify the costs involved.
However, Pokorny maintains an NCAA quality facility is an investment and the long-term benefits would be worth it.
“The point behind phrasing the legislation that way was to be more ahead of the times,” explains Pokorny.
Despite the bill’s passage students need not break out their bowling shoes. Conversations have begun among Baylor administrators, but the bowling alley conceptual phase director of stuproposed by Pokorny is still in a dent activities Matt Burchett said.
“Right now as far as the reconstruction part, we’re still waiting on potential designs to be evaluated by the various campus departments that need to be a part of that,” said Burchett. “Nick’s legislation is very much on the front end of the conceptual timeframe, although I think our aspiration is to have a completed bowling center ready to go by the fall of 2013.”
Pokorny was not alone in his unsuccessful attempt to secure a strike with senators’ votes at Thursday’s meeting. Junior Abby Scheller and senior Blessing Amune’s Phi Delta Theta First Annual Tex-Fest bill was passed by a majority vote in the Senate, but it was also unable to get unanimous approval from the senators present.
According to the legislation, “Phi Delta Theta is hosting the first annual Tex-Fest which is an ASL benefit concert featuring Texas country artist Whiskey Myers.”
Phi Delta Theta has requested nearly 44 percent of its event cost be covered by funds from the student government allocation fund, a percentage protesting senators claimed was too high for a first time event.
