Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 26, 1993 TAG: 9309260142
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PHILIP WALZER FOR THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
At Old Dominion University, there's a $12 million addition to the Webb Center, including 11 meeting rooms, a food court and a boardroom with a mahogany-and-oak table that seats 27.
The College of William and Mary is finishing its $12.5 million University Center, with two ballrooms, a 450-seat auditorium and a dining hall for 350 students.
Hampton University is touching up a $12.5 million, 7,200-seat convocation hall, which will hold graduation, basketball games and concerts (with spacious his and hers dressing rooms for the performers).
College officials say the buildings are necessities as their enrollment and students' cravings for new activities grow.
"You've got to provide campus center space for students," said Fred Hilton, a spokesman for James Madison University, which will open a $7.8 million addition to its campus center complex next month. "It's very much a student-oriented campus. We were operating a center for 4,000 students, and we're at 11,000 now."
But even some students wonder whether, at a time of sliced budgets and soaring tuition, the money could be better spent on academics.
"It will fulfill the wants of the students, but not the needs," William and Mary junior Leigh Anne Barton said of the University Center. "I would think there is so much more they could have done with the money, like improving the library."
Paul Goldman, a member of the State Council of Higher Education, says universities' insatiable hunger for new construction is yet another reflection of their unwillingness to cut costs.
"You can always make an argument why a building's good, but you can't afford all these things," he said. "Somehow, there has to be a way of demonstrating priorities. There's just no evidence anyone's prepared to cut anything."
The pace of college construction will increase rapidly during the next few years.
A $472 million bond issue, approved by Virginia voters last year, launched 95 projects, most of which are academic buildings. They include a $30 million library/student center at George Mason University, a $13 million science and technology center at James Madison and an $8 million performing arts hall at Norfolk State University.
University officials, lobbying for the construction, pointed to the deterioration of old buildings and an expected surge in enrollment by the year 2000.
But a recent state study criticized schools for not making good use of the classrooms they already have.
Only two universities - Christopher Newport and Virginia Commonwealth - and two community colleges - Thomas Nelson and Lord Fairfax - met the state council's standard of using classrooms an average of 40 hours a week. Two schools - Virginia Military Institute and Mary Washington College - used classrooms less than 20 hours a week.
The council told the schools that if they didn't increase their classroom use by 1996, the council would reject requests for new classroom buildings. At least one school, though, questioned the figures: George Mason spokeswoman Helen Ackerman said the school used its rooms 41 hours a week - not the 32 hours a week reported in the study.
At its meeting in September, the education council also took a tougher line than usual on a slate of non-academic building projects proposed for the next two years. Nearly all would have been funded by increased student fees.
The council rejected three proposals, including a $4 million athletic complex at Clinch Valley College, and "recommended for planning only" seven others, including a $10 million swimming pool at George Mason and a $7.7 million football field at Norfolk State. Schools should find ways other than raising fees to fund those projects, the council said.
"We're saying, `Hey, let's hold up on these things,' " said Donald J. Finley, associate director of the council. "These fee projects have become an issue in recent years because of questions about luxuries rather than necessities and questions of students having to pay for them. Up until last year, they went through as a matter of course. But the questions are getting louder and louder."
Goldman, saying that even approving "planning" for the buildings gave colleges the wrong signal, voted against the proposals.
Finley said William and Mary's University Center, though backed by the council a few years ago, was considered "one of the least supportable" projects because of doubts about its need.
But William Merck, William and Mary's vice president for administration, said the school needed to relieve overcrowding in its two older dining halls and to create "a living room for our students in between activities" - although it already has a campus center.
At Old Dominion, the new Webb Center will bring under one roof the career, counseling and health centers and provide more space for student groups to meet, Vice President Richard A. Staneski said. He added that the school would make money from retailers, who are renting space at $20 to $28 a square foot.
But senior Rowena Pascual said, "They're cutting back on staff and faculty and things like that . . . and then here they are spending so much money to have this big mall here on campus, which I think is kind of crazy."
by CNB