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Council ensures student input in new MU design
Motion passes after failures from Union South committees
LUKAS KEAPPROTH/Herald photo
Dan Cornelius compromises on restoring the committee for Memorial Union.
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Acknowledging planned student involvement in the Union South project was lacking in the final stages of the process last summer, Union Council passed a motion ensuring a student design committee would be reinstated for the Memorial Union renovation.
When the plans for the Union construction projects were initially established, a referendum promised that students would have “control over every aspect of the project and ownership of the final results.”
With every student paying $96 dollars a semester until 2040, totaling $100 million of the cost of the project, student involvement should be high, according to Associated Students of Madison Chair Tyler Junger.
During the Union South design project, there was a student-led design committee that oversaw every major design decision for the project.
When the construction phase of the project began last spring, the Design Committee’s charter was closed, as had been initially planned, according to Vice President for Project Management Patrick Tilley.
While there were several interim processes established to continue student involvement over the summer, the lack of available students on campus prevented this from happening in full.
Several groups were supposed to meet four times over the summer to discuss the furniture, fixtures and equipment phase of the design process.
“There were one or two meetings and then the process fell apart, abandoned, (got) postponed, whatever you want to call it,” Tilley said.
Additionally, an interim Design Committee meeting of student majority was intended to review all the decisions that had been made in the furniture, fixtures and equipment phase. That also never happened, partly due to the lack of students on campus, according to Tilley.
“We’re looking forward to Memorial Union now to make sure there is that student oversight,” Tilley said.
While Dan Cornelius, former vice president for project management, proposed a motion to immediately reinstate the student Design Committee at October’s meeting, he acknowledged that, at this point in the process, it was more important to look forward to the Memorial Union project.
To this end, Junger proposed the creation of a student ad hoc committee in the next couple weeks to look at student involvement in the Union South project and learn from it’s shortcomings.
After deliberation, Cornelius accepted a friendly amendment to his motion that originally called for the immediate reinstatement of the Design Committee.
The amendment passed with an overwhelming majority and directed Tilley to work with Union Council Facilities Subcommittee, Union Council Executive, and ASM to propose the structure and operations of the Memorial Union Design Committee at its December meeting.
The amended motion also ensured student input into any and all significant issues related to the Memorial Union Renovation Project prior to the creation of the Design Committee.
Junger stressed the importance of having a broad student opinion on the Design Committee and encouraged recruiting students not intimately involved in the Union or ASM.
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what were the shortcomings of the Union South building project? From what I heard its going amazingly? #studentinvolvement
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How much input do we need in the renovation? Shouldn’t the overall goal (other than accessibility for those who are disabled) be to restore Memorial Union to it’s original styling and condition?