Issuu

Party like its 1989 Taylor Swift says goodbye to country Arts Page 5 vol. 103, no. 19

wednesday october 29, 2014

1 SECTION, 6 PAGES

AES faces restructuring proposal

what’s INSIDE

Madeline Orr editor in chief

NEWS KACU fundraises through annual pledge drive Page 3

SPORTS Soccer finsishes season with 1-0 loss to McMurry

The university is seeking to close the Department of Agriculture and Environmental Science as part of its efforts to reduce expenses. Dr. Gregory Straughn informed students in the department at a meeting after Chapel on Monday. Straughn, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, said this fall and into the spring the university will decide how to close the department, moving portions to

the Department of Biology. The proposal is to allow students currently enrolled in all three agriculture department majors – agribusiness, animal science and environmental science – to complete their degrees. After that, the biology department will serve students in pre-veterinarian medicine and wildlife and natural resource management, the department’s two most highly subscribed programs. Once students now seeking agribusiness and animal science degrees have been graduated, those majors will

be closed. Dr. Susan Lewis, assistant provost, said closure of those degrees and merging of the others with biology remains a proposal that will require faculty approval but believes it is the most likely path forward. “We have a lot of conversations to have and the opportunity for input from faculty and students,” Lewis said. “We will now need to start conversations with the faculty councils that ultimately vote on this.” The department will be allowed to respond to the

proposal in writing, then both the proposal and the department’s response will go to a university academic council of nine members who vote to approve the proposal. Students at the meeting Monday expressed frustration with the decision and asked Straughn and Lewis questions about their concerns. Mike Keenan, junior wildlife and natural resource management major from Redwood City, California, said he is concerned the wildlife and natural resource

management degree will turn into a wildlife biology degree once it moves to the biology department. “In our department, the two predominant majors are pre-veterinarian medicine and wildlife and natural resource management,” he said. “It is in fact, not prevet and wildlife, which head honchos don’t understand.” Keenan said natural resource management is a huge, growing field. “The natural resource management degree is kind see AES page 3

STEEL WAITING Page 6

OPINION Marissa Jones stands up for Generation Y and why we aren’t quite doomed Page 4

NEWS Minda Street Church of Christ celebrates its 35th anniversary

Page 3

OPINION High courts should be cautious of ruling on Voter ID close to election season

erika bolado staff Photographer

Enigneering and physics students hold their breath hoping for the completion of their new building before the start of next semester. The construction fell behind schedule after a delay in acquiring city permits and building materials.

Steel shortage delays Bennett project Page 4

SPORTS Wildcats dropped the ball on Saturday. Football suffered from 4 turn overs against SHSU Page 6

ARTS Richard Lyne reviews the student opinion of the World Famous Bean and its food Page 5

daniel block intramurals editor Bennett Gymnasium’s transformation into new engineering and physics laboratories has fallen behind schedule. The upgrade to the historical facility is one of five major projects included in ACU’s Vision in Action initiative. Construction on Bennett Gymnasium began in April 2014, with the original date of completion expected to come before the start of the fall semester, said Kevin Rob-

allison brown

VIDEO Reporter Laura Benson recaps campus events in last week’s newscast

at the outside, it takes two weeks,” Roberts said. “And that’s a really long time. A combination of some vacation time with the city, and then May ended up being the busiest month for permits ever in the history of the city of Abilene. What normally took two weeks took us six. Everything just ground to a halt.” Construction also hit a snag while drilling to pour cement piers, Roberts said. “We started drilling down, and at about 16 to 18 feet we hit concrete,” Roberts said.

The concrete was poured during the 1929 construction of Bennett Gymnasium. Roberts said the construction crew was unaware the concrete columns existed because the original blueprints for Bennett could not be found. Engineers returned and redesigned the layout for the steel beams, causing another multiweek delay, Roberts said. Steel had already been ordered to build the new laboratories before the crew knew it would have to relocate the beams, Roberts said. When the

time came for the Bennett order to be processed and manufactured, the engineers had not finished redesigning the layout. As a result, the order was pushed to the back of the waiting list. “We lost our place in line,” Roberts said. “Now we’re way behind.” As the order moved its way up the line the second time, the entire Texas steel industry suddenly experienced a shortage of raw materials used for supply, Roberts said. “All of a sudden we lost see bennett page 3

Student Life approves new social club managing editor

what’s online

erts, vice president of operations. Roberts said the project has fallen behind schedule because of a domino effect of minor hiccups during construction. “It’s kind of hard to unwind exactly which (event caused the delay),” Roberts said. “But essentially, there were some preceding events that led to it.” A busy summer for the city of Abilene delayed the acquisition of proper construction permits by four weeks, Roberts said. “Permitting, usually

After two years of attempts at re-chartering, Tri Kappa Gamma is now the sixth women’s social club on campus. After many conversations with the Office of Student Life, the second charter class has chosen sponsors and will begin meeting this semester. Mark Jackson, director of Student Life, said TKG will have its first pledge class in the spring. Last spring, there was

ACUOPTIMIST.COM

an attempt to re-charter Tri Kappa, but Student Life said the process of re-chartering would take at least a year. The first attempt didn’t pan out last year. However, this fall, an increased number of girls wanting to pledge meant more of a demand for bids, but not enough supply. With these conditions at hand, Student Life said they felt like the re-chartering needed to be done in a shorter amount of time. “For the past two years as the numbers have continued to grow in girls that are interested and girls that actually do pledge, we’ve

known for some time that we probably need to get a sixth girls club on campus,” Jackson said. “With last year, it was one girl who was doing a lot of it on her own. There were other interested girls but at that time we really felt like it needed to be a yearlong process. This year, realizing the amount of girls wanting to pledge, we said we need to do this and do it sooner rather than later.” Brooklyn Merkord, sophomore elementary education major from Round Rock, is one of the students who has been involved with the rechartering process.

The Optimist