Construction puts lab expansion on hold ’til next year
Associated Student President Quinn Millet’s resolution to expand the Taggart Student Center computer lab and QuickStop has been put on hold while construction of the new food court on the second floor moves forward this summer.
The planned expansion requires the Utah Statesman to move its offices. Since the expansion will not be done this summer, the Statesman will not have to move for a year. It will be the second time the Statesman will be moved in three years.
Laurel Evans, ASUSU programming vice president and chairperson of the Policy Board, said the Board didn’t want to set a precedent of moving the Statesman whenever it becomes convenient, so it is important to find a permanent location for it. An ad hoc committee of ASUSU members and Statesman representatives was formed to discuss possible places for the offices to be relocated to.
Holly Scott, ASUSU public relations officer and the ad hoc committee chair, said the committee came to the consensus that the student TV lounge on the second floor of the TSC would be the best place to relocate the newspaper, but the fine details will have to be worked out.
“If we’re going to mess around down here, we should do it in a way that’s thinking logistically,” said TSC director Gary Chambers. He said the next year should be used for planning and construction should not be done this summer.
Scott presented the committee’s recommendation to the TSC Policy Board Wednesday. She said some of the concerns the Statesman had were addressing the need for an outside entrance to accommodate the paper’s late work hours and having enough space for the editors, the faculty advisor, advertising representatives and a secretary.
The lounge, which was only recently remodeled with couches, LoveSacs, tables and chairs and a plasma TV, does not have nearly the same floor space the current Statesman offices has. Jay Wamsley, Statesman faculty advisor, said the Statesman currently has more space than it needs, but the lounge, as it is now, does not have enough.
Scott said the lounge “will be required to be altered” but the logistics are not certain yet. There is a meeting room next to it, but Chambers said it’s “one of the few places left in the building to have a meeting” and would not like to see it made into an expansion of the lounge. Another option to expand the space is to enclose the small patio outside the lounge.
“It’s going to take a little thinking to make this work right,” Chambers said.
When the resolution was passed in February with no provision for where the Statesman would be relocated there was some tension between the Statesman employees and ASUSU. Scott said she felt it was good she chaired the committee since she is not an elected member of the Executive Council and is a neutral party. She said she felt the newspaper will have a better setup after this than it has now.
The resolution took six months to prepare before it came before the Executive Council. During that time Statesman writers were unable to get much information about it. Joseph Ure, ASUSU administrative assistant, said it was not a secret that space was an issue in the TSC and ASUSU was looking for ways to make it more space-efficient. He said people didn’t know about it because it was a matter of when it was appropriate to present the information and because the information was not all gathered yet.
Millet said the money for the expansion would come from Computing Services’ budget. He said Student Lab Services Manager Gary Egbert was supportive of the expansion and for that reason was willing to spend some of his budget on the project.
-ella@cc.usu.edu