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$60 million Natatorium upgrade raises concerns
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by Carolyn Potts
Thursday, April 17, 2008
The Division of Recreational Sports is facing skeptics after putting forth a proposition to have student fees fund a new $60 million Natatorium facility.
The cost of the project is estimated at $60 million, which will come directly from student segregated fees. The new building will add $60 for the next 30 years to the almost $50 students already pay per year for recreational facilities on campus.
Recreational Sports met with the Shared Governance Committee April 1 and gave an informal proposal on their tentative plans for the project, which include rebuilding a portion of the existing building, Shared Governance Committee Chair Jeff Wright said.
According to Wright, the committee questioned Recreational Sports’ decision to fund the project entirely through student fees.
“Some people liked the concept but having students pay for all of it raises some concerns,” Wright said. “For the most part, they would be in support of something like this, but they would like other revenue streams to be looked at.”
Dale Carruthers, director of the Division of Recreational Sports, said “there will be an effort” to secure external funding for the project. Carruthers said he seriously doubts they will receive state money, so the funding would have to be private.
Although Carruthers said he thought the committee’s response to the proposal was positive, Wright said “students were really skeptical of the plans to [rebuild] the Natatorium.” He said he was a little concerned with the way the group came to the committee.
“I think some of the members of the Division of Recreational Sports were under the impression that they could just come and get the support of the students and the Shared Governance Committee,” Wright said.
He said the committee made no decisions on the proposal and did not give any kind of support for it.
Recreational Sports will try to gain the support of Student Council and ASM in the near future, but they will be taking the proposal to the Campus Planning Committee on May 15 with or without it. The proposal will then go before the Board of Regents in August and will eventually make it to the state Legislature to be approved.
However, Carruthers said it is “really up to the students whether or not they want to see this on our campus.”
He said they will begin preparing to get on the ballot for next year’s spring elections. The referendum will be used to gauge student support of the proposal.
Carruthers said the project is needed because the building, which was built in the 1960s and updated in the 1970s, has become too small for the University of Wisconsin campus. The use of the recreational facilities has increased over the years to just short of 300,000 entries a year, and 31,000 different students used the facility last year.
“Whenever you do a facility like this, what you ask students to consider is an investment in future students,” Carruthers said.
Anonymous (April 17, 2008 @ 7:49am):
flatly unacceptable. there are three athletic facilities on campus -- 60M would be a ridiculous proposal for upgrades to all three, much less building any one new one
frank rojas (April 17, 2008 @ 10:04am):
It would be far more useful to raise such a sum to fund a pool of money to increase the salaries of top professors who are now being lured away by other schools due to UW's low pay for professors. The $2,400,000 per year could fund $10,000 raises for 240 top profs.
Anonymous (April 17, 2008 @ 1:25pm):
I work a student job for 7.50 an hour. My boss told me there was not enough money in the budget to raise my wage when the minimum wage increase takes effect. Don't tell me we have enough money for jocks, but not enough money for books.
Anonymous (April 17, 2008 @ 4:23pm):
I don't think there has EVER been a building project on campus that wasn't supported somewhat by private funds. I would be completely unacceptable to make the students pay for the whole renovation because Rec Sports can't get any money. If they can't get a considerable amount of money from private funds or other non seg fee routes the project should be postponed until such funds can be secured.
Anonymous (April 17, 2008 @ 4:39pm):
I doubt student seg fees will ever be used for faculty salary increases. The state needs to step up and support the university or private donors will need to do so. This is a project that provides direct service to thet students. If they want it, they'll need to support it fully.
Anonymous (April 21, 2008 @ 6:06pm):
I think that this facility is much needed here on campus. The Division of Rec Sports secures their funding through segregated fees and staff/community member membership fees. So if the segregated fees for students are going up then so are the fees for the professors. So the project won't be solely funded through student segregated fees. If you have ever used the Nat facility you would agree that something needs to be done about the state that it is in. Also, the Kinesiology dept would benefit from this project as well because they would receive the building sections that are currently the Nat.
Anonymous (April 21, 2008 @ 6:22pm):
Anyone that works out or even works at the Rec Sports facilities knows that a change would be great. They're planning on putting in an indoor track, turf, food court, and many other things at the new Nat. Think of the times you've been in the cardio room at 4pm at the SERF - there's not a machine open for hours and 3-4 of them tend to be broken. New facilities will help take care of this issue. The state should help fund the renovations, too. Seg fees are just part of your tuition, whether you use the facilities or not. It would end up benefiting everyone, and maybe even motivate people to get healthy.
Anonymous (July 23, 2008 @ 2:28pm):
This is ridiculous. They keep raising our tuition. If you want renovations at the Nat, don't put it on the backs of students! This is a public university, so we need a huge public reinvestment by the state congress.
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