Gustavus has recently modified policies regarding institutional liability. One of these policies stresses that student organizations must take college vehicles if driving over 400 miles on a round trip or staying overnight. The other requires “potentially violent” club sports to have coaches.

The two policy changes were made due to the college’s concern with students’ safety as well as the consideration of its own liability.

The new travel policy has been enforced since this fall semester. Last year the travel policy was that student organizations must take a college vehicle if they went overnight and also went over 400 miles. The new policy requires that a student organization take a college vehicle if either staying overnight OR driving more than 400 miles.

The Vice President for Student Life and Dean of Students, JoNes VanHecke, pointed out the incident that initiated the change.

“We had a really serious car accident last year. It wasn’t a student organization going, but it was a group of students that were travelling together. We know that buses are safer than five cars. We know that when people are tired because they drive super long distances, then there is more likelihood that we can have an accident in those kinds of scenarios. The change in policy is trying to think more intentionally about how we can increase the likelihood that students are safe. And simultaneously, think about the college’s liability,” VanHecke said.

The policy addressing the club sports has existed for about two or three years, but Gustavus has had difficulties on implementation.

The President of Women’s Hockey Club Team Casey Lindquist expressed sentiment about the policy.

“I do not like the guidelines we must follow in regards to who we can have as a coach, and I do not like that we don’t get funding to help hire one,” Lindquist said.

According to Lindquist, the guidelines indicate that the coach can not be a student and must be present at all practices and games.

Lindquist also specified the problems she and her team have encountered in ther search for a coach.

“I guess the only one that I don’t agree with is not being able to be a student coach. And having 6:30 a.m. practices makes the coach have to be in the St. Peter area or somewhere very local. Which makes them even harder to find. And not being able to have help funding a coach makes it even more difficult to find an incentive for a coach to come to morning practices, drive to the cities for games, or drive from the cities to St. Peter,” Lindquist said.

However, Senior Student Senate Controller Eric Best revealed that the Finance Committee has been working on the issue to help ease the financial burden that club sports have. Best gave a few details of the plan that the Finance Committee has come up with.

“The limit used to be $3,000 for club sports. We’re going to increase that to $4,000, because of the travel policy. And then there is also an option for those club sports that are required to have a coach, they can apply for up to another $1,000,” Best said.

Best claimed that such an increase in funding for club sports should not affect other student organizations, considering the portion of student activity fees that the Student Senate will collect next year.

The proposal involving the specific changes the Finance Committee would like to make will go before the Student Senate on the March 17.