Saluki Way Donations Almost on Schedule

Today's Southern reports that administrators in athletics are confident that donations to Saluki Way are coming in more or less on schedule, despite rumors to the contrary (the story is on the front page of the print edition--but I had to do a search to find the article online).  The story gives a figure for such donations: $9.7 million. It does not note that this represents only a small share of the project's (conservatively estimated) $76 million cost or that the majority of the funding is coming from student fees. President Poshard is quoted saying that McAndrew stadium needed to be fixed. I bet that could have been done for a bit less than $76 million.

Saluki Way Plows Forward

The DE has a solid story on the construction currently underway on campus to ready the way for the new $32 million student services building.  This all to further Saluki Way, whose goal, as the story puts it (no doubt quoting official language) is to "establish a new campus core at the university": parking, an administrative building, and sports, sports, sports.  

Debbie O’Neill, a graduate student in speech communication and women studies from Washington, said she doesn’t understand why over $1 million is spent on parking lots when the university’s academics are suffering from the budget crisis.

“I’m adamantly against spending that kind of money,” she said. “They’re going to spend $1 million on parking? That’s ludicrous. They need to put that money back into education.”

Before parking lots 10A and 10B were redesigned, O’Neill said there were two rows of trees within the lots, which are now gone.

“(The university) took out the trees that gave shade to people in cars and made the university look nicer,” she said. “There was no need … there wasn’t even a need to resurface that lot. It wasn’t pockmarked and torn up. That was a waste of money and a waste of time. It was an absolute waste of everything.”

If you build it, they will come?

Indoor groundbreaking for the track & field complex.

The new $3.96 million track & field complex is now under construction, as part of the grand Saluki Way program. The track & field construction is related to the plan to build a new Student Services building where the parking deck is now; the first phase of construction of the new Student Services building (basically reallocation of parking to compensate for spaces lost when the parking deck goes down) is now under way.

Math whizzes in the audience will note that the $4.0 million to be spent on the track & field complex is rather more than the $2.6 in planned savings for furloughs this past year. Throw in the student center expenses, and you'd probably have enough to avoid furloughs next year as well.