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Gilbertson announces $12 million grant from state at Open Forum
April 4, 2005 —
President Eric Gilbertson announced the approval of a $16 million project to expand Pioneer Hall and answered questions concerning the use of student ID's upon admittance into the Ryder Center at a brief open forum held on March 23.
No more than twenty people, four of whom were students, were present at the forum, which took place in the Alumni Lounge.
Gilbertson explained that the legislature agreed to spend $12 million to update the oldest building on campus, Pioneer Hall. SVSU will only be responsible for coming up with $4 million to complete the project.
"It should be a nice boost for the engineering program," Gilbertson said, admitting that the current labs in the building are undersized.
Executive Director of Information Technology Services Ken Schindler announced during the forum that there are now WI-FI hot spots available in the Doan South dining area next to the Cardinal Cage. Any students with properly equipped laptop computers can sit in this designated area and surf the Internet.
Upon the first connection at the hot spots, the user will be asked to register his or her computer. After that, only a username and password will be required. Students can sign in just as they would if they were using a computer in any on-campus computer lab.
The hot spots will be relocated on Saturday to the Doan North dining area due to construction that will be done in Doan South starting on Monday, April 11.
Areas that have wireless capabilities will be identified by a tent-shaped sign placed on top of the table where students can sit when using the hot spots.
A student raised questions about the purpose of ID checking upon entering the Ryder Center. Right now, every student is required to show ID when entering whether they are going to the gym or to class.
The argument was made that this is an inconvenience when trying to go to early classes in the Ryder Center, because students often forget to carry their ID cards to class with them.
Gilbertson expressed his understanding as to how frustrating that might be, but answered by stating that it was simply a safety precaution. The Ryder Center is different than other buildings on campus because of the locker rooms.
More privacy is required, he said, and the only way to ensure this privacy is to check identification.
Another student questioned Gilbertson about freshmen parking for the upcoming fall semester, saying that she had heard rumors about freshmen not being given parking privileges. Gilbertson cleared up the misunderstanding, but not before laughing at how fast the rumor managed to spread throughout the campus.
The way that the campus is set up, the only place to expand parking is on the outside edge, which means more walking for commuters who drive to campus every morning.
However, according to Gilbertson, this should not be a problem, because the campus is set up to accommodate pedestrians.
Another topic covered at the forum was the upcoming Ludacris concert. So far, ticket sales have reached 3,000, with 2,000 of those being SVSU students. In order to make a profit, the SVSU Program Board has to sell more than 4,200 tickets.
If sales continue like that have so far, this may be the first concert to ever bring in a profit for the Program Board.