Many Mississippi State University students are beginning to wonder whatever happened to campuses of old with colonial style buildings like that of Lee Hall and the new Swalm Chemical Engineering Building. MSU has been a sight for many to see with the buildings such as the Bell Tower and Montgomery Hall. MSU is trying to appropriate money for construction to help restore these buildings, which have been standing for a good bit of the campus’ history.
Many students are beginning to wonder when all the construction is going to end, what exactly are they doing to the buildings and how can MSU afford all this construction, when all that is ever talked about by the president’s office is the shortage of money in the student budget?
Mississippi State’s Director of University Relations Joe Farris presented a slide show presentation that showed the campus has got much more construction work going on than the work that is visible around the central campus. Some of these places that many students can see around campus are seen at the renovations of Cresswell Hall, Blackjack Road, McCain Hall, Carillon Towers repairs and the Montgomery Hall renovation.
The MSU campus has 24 construction projects that are either waiting to be
funded, or in the process of being repaired between Starkville and the Meridian campus.
“I don’t care if the renovations are going on. They don’t bother me to much. But, I don’t want the construction work to be paid for with my tuition,” Kyle Stoddard,student, said “So I really don’t care one way or the other.”
Many said they wonder how the buildings are being paid for, and Farris had an answer for this.
“We know the student body is wondering how all these buildings and renovations are going to be paid for with all the budget cuts going on around campus,” Farris said. “The state funding and private supports from alumni and such pay for a good bit of the construction going on around campus.” For example, from the slide show Farris prepared buildings such as the Carillon Tower or the The Old Bell Tower of MSU, received somewhere near $300,000 in state bonds and received $48,000 in private funds towards these restorations. None of the money students pay towards tuition is going into the renovations projects. Very few of the projects around MSU use money in which students pay toward tuition.
The University is only using somehere around $10 million on the recent and current renovations of Critz Hall, Cresswell Hall and Hathorn Hall that was received from the students who live in dorms. The only project that MSU is paying for is that of the bicycle and pedestrian path located all around campus, and it is only using $360,000 out of the MSU budget.
Some students said the cost of the projects are not what worries them.
Hathorn Hall resident Drew Wilson said, “Many times when I have been sleeping in the early morning between 7 and 8 a.m., I hear the sounds of a bolt going into the wall or a piece of machinery moving objects around on the construction site. These sounds do become really annoying most of the time especially while trying to study or sleep.”
Wilson also said that the construction on campus is a “major hassle when it comes to traffic and everyone trying to get to class in the mornings. The construction is also taking up many valuable parking spots in which the students need to park, and we already have enough parking problems as it is. The construction just adds to this problem.”
Farris said that it never seems like all the construction will be done, “The campus is always changing and as soon as a building has been renovated there is another building on campus that needs to be renovated, so our college campus is an ever-changing environment and the only way to keep our buildings from leaking and desecrating is to keep renovating them.”
The renovations going on around the campus are going to take a little time but most of the ones in which are visible around campus such as Cresswell, Montgomery and McCain halls, should be finished and open to the student body by the beginning of next year’s fall semester.
But workers are hopeful.
“My men are doing the work as fast and as best they can and we expect for our project here at Cresswell to be done by the beginning of June,” James Young, superintendent of the Creswell Hall renovations, said.
Farris said the process may be long, but said he “appreciates all the students’ patience with the construction going on. He said “please help to work with us to make MSU a more beautiful and better place to attend school.”
Farris said that future improvement, like the Colvard Union, are in the initial stages. Although, he said the money is not there yet, the ideas for improvements to MSU always are.