Today and tomorrow, students will be able to vote on the referendum on the University Center Transformation Project. The referendum was authorized by the Student Government Association in September, and now it’s time for the students of UH to pass it or kill it.
It’s true that passage of the referendum will increase the UC fee by $25, but it is well worth it.
The UC is a decrepit, sorry excuse for a student center. It’s downright depressing – full of vermin and feces.
The offices and rooms have been expanded and changed so many times some offices have two or three different air-conditioning systems. This is wasteful, as are the air-conditioning and heating systems themselves.
The new design will utilize more natural light and will also include a brand new climate-control system. This will save money on electricity costs and provide a more welcoming environment for students.
The UC in its current form is just a patchwork of administrative offices, meeting rooms and restaurants. The rhyme and reason of its layout was lost many years ago. New students are lost in its inefficient layout and turned off by the lack of aesthetics.
With an improved, more efficient design, the wireless Internet service can be improved. Currently, it is hit-or-miss, like much of the campus, but this project will enhance students’ ability to surf the Internet or work on homework with less frustration.
Upon viewing other schools’ student centers designed by Holzman Moss Architecture, the firm tasked with our UC’s redesign, one can see efficient floor plans, shininess and beautiful, pleasing wood grains. In the lounge areas, there are many windows and new, modern designs.
Enter the current UC and one gets the feeling of being in Castle Macbeth, with is dark sogginess and plague-ridden aura. Not much of a gathering place for young, fresh minds looking for respite from the tedium of academia.
Whether you support the plan, vote in the referendum. But if you vote "no," remember, your child may study here one day. And this UC may still be here, same as it was when you were here. How will you answer their questions of, "Why didn’t you do something about it when you had the chance, Daddy?" or, "Mommy, I want to transfer to UT because I got tuberculosis from one of the UC’s pigeons?"
One should be proud of one’s school, and the nation’s fourth-largest city’s largest university should have a student center everyone can be proud of. This University deserves a better UC.