| Issue 5 | Volume 143 | Tuesday, February 17, 2015 | theavion.com |
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Student Opinion
Student Union Falls Short
Trey Henderson/The Avion Newspaper Student Union architect Joe Tattoni presents a current working design of the new student union to interested students at last Thursday’s Master Planning Open House.
University Reveals Student Union Plans
Architects Confident in Fall 2017 Grand Opening Himani Parekh Staff Reporter A motley of students, staff, and directors of various sections of the University drifted about the room. On the left were a series of posters and tables, on the right various refreshments. The atmosphere in the room was curious and thoughtful, with a low buzz of formality. No surprise, given that this early influx of people was here for the Master Planning Open House, discussing and getting a sense of the planned changes to the Embry-Riddle campus. This includes the new student center/library complex and the new student resident spaces. The open house, held in the Henderson Building, lasted for four hours. Within that time, all those interested in knowing more about the upcoming changes were welcome to view the plans and add their input. The first of the posters depicted the planned changes to the student resident areas. By the next spring semester, the university plans to have a new residence hall to replace McKay Hall. It will be located before the bridge and will increase be able to house five hundred more students than currently possible. Unfortunately, the space allocated for the new residence hall includes the current basketball courts, which some students, via the provided sticky notes, indicated should be moved to a new location instead of being removed entirely. The rooms within the new residence halls will be similar in layout to those in Apollo. The next few posters asked for the input of the faculty and staff on matters related to the student center, residence areas, and community spaces on campus. What type of study spaces do students prefer? Where do students feel the most sense of community? What changes would they like to see in food services? What is a deciding factor in choosing to live on campus? The list goes on. Students and staff could indicate their opinion by placing a dot sticker next to a concept or by writing out a suggestion on a sticky note. The final section dealt with the new student center, a large, four-story complex designed to house everything from SGA to food services to the library -- a one-stop hub for students. The model suggested a futuristic curving building reminiscent of an aircraft, with an outdoor patio looking out to the runway. Construction of the building
is currently slated for the upcoming fall semester with the architects thoroughly confident that the building will be complete and open to the students by fall 2017. As the day went on, the crowd swelled as more students and staff attended in order to learn more about the plans. Some students seemed excited: the ideas seemed to be in the best interest of the students. Others expressed concern that the university is planning on unnecessary construction and that the input of students will not truly be incorporated. However, when I asked the question of just how much influence the little sticky notes had, I was assured that these designs were still flexible and able to be influenced by the students’ voice. The open house was a good opportunity for students to, at the very least, see the changes planned for the university and potentially contribute meaningfully to the way in which they want the student center and resident spaces to serve them.
Trey Henderson/The Avion Newspaper In addition to posterboards presented around the room with floorplans and proposed spaces, the architects brought with them a scale mock up of the new student union as well as surrounding builds for students to get an idea of the changes coming to campus.
The dreams of the Embry-Riddle Eagles has taken about 10 years of student fees, hopes, and desires, but is becoming nothing but remnant pieces of what once was a building that represents the pride of our campus. Most student feedback, hopes and ideas since the project was conceived in 2005 have been neglected or ignored because of budget constraints or political agendas, which frankly have no concern for our interest. To make things worse, the architect’s assumption that supports all the buildings supposedly elegant designs are conservative at best. According to my conversation with a representative from ikon.5 (the contracted firm for the Student Union), the key elements that drive the design are flexibility of expansion and utilization of rooms and capacity of the building, all based on the forecasted growth of students in the next couple of years. However, this key assumption that is the foundation of the entire design is questionable because it rests on the forecasted range of the minimum amount of future students. The second assumption is study space, based on the projected influx of students in the next couple of years. According to the master planner, there will be enough study space for 10,000 students, which is what our campus could be facing in the next 10 to 15 years. Over the next two years, it is reasonable to expect reaching 6,000 students on the Daytona Beach campus and 7,500 in the next four years. As it stands now, our library is the main study space. If you compare the Hunt Library with the planned one in the new Union building, the square footage is not a substantial increase, and more importantly, the seating would barely account for our current population of 5,500 students. As a senior studying accounting and finance, I am positive that the architect is not taking into account the maximum possible influx of students that could enroll if he is wrong in his scenario analysis. There should be more study space because estimating too low is a recipe for major disappointment that we will feel during finals week when the library is maxed out. This firm is being extremely conservative in their estimates of the study space, student traffic, flexibility and capacity requirements of the building with our tuition money and we are going to pay the price. Continued on A5>>