The University unveiled the new, long-awaited UREC “outdoor leisure pool” via its official Twitter on July 15. While students float in the lazy river brazenly shaped like the LSU logo, they can be comforted by the fact that the $85 million UREC renovation project was fully funded through student fees.
During a time when the sustainability of the TOPS program was called into question and the University administration was preparing for the possibility of bankruptcy, we, the students, paid for four “bubbler lounges” while our 60-year-old library continues to, quite literally, fall into ruin and our academic buildings remain decrepit and dilapidated.
In November of 2011, 4,273 University students responded to a survey regarding the UREC. About 76 percent agreed they would support a fee increase for an expansion and redesign of the UREC. On Nov. 16, 2011, the Student Government Senate passed a resolution urging the administration to impose a fee increase to support the expansion of the UREC.
Construction began with the first phase of the expansion in 2013. The building process occurred amid a budget crisis, with the state government grappling a $1.6 billion shortfall and higher education on the chopping block with $500 million in prospective cuts. In the spring of 2015, LSU President F. King Alexander announced the University was preparing an academic bankruptcy plan in response to the fiscal crisis. Let them eat cake.
Students should care about where their money is going, and putting it toward projects that will increase the quality of education they receive. While floating in a big, extravagant pool is nice on a hot Louisiana day, it does nothing to propel students to the next phase of their lives after attending the University.
The University has been criticized in the past for placing too much emphasis on its athletic program and letting academics fall to the wayside. This lazy river demonstrates those misplaced priorities.
We can tout prospective students to our school with a renovated recreation complex and flashy “leisure pool,” but the University’s disinvestment in the very people who keep it open becomes apparent when those same students pay thousands of dollars in tuition to study in a building that looks the same as it did in 1970, complete with rotting floors and leaking ceilings. The place that is intended to drive education and learning — Middleton Library — does the opposite, and sends the wrong message of what the University should represent.
While new facilities like the Patrick F. Taylor engineering building are being constructed, what about the often overlooked humanities and liberal arts buildings? Students literally sit on the floor in overcrowded classes in the basement of Lockett Hall, infamous for being cramped and musty.
The Studio Arts building looks deserted, the basement of Allen Hall resembles a barely-lit horror movie and too often researchers and artists alike are forced into shabby spaces like these to do their work.
Students should demand better conditions for classrooms, laboratories and study areas. If our learning facilities continue to stay in a state of disrepair while student fees rise, we will only have ourselves to blame.
Editor’s Note: A previous version of this story stated that LSU Student Government passed the resolution Nov. 16, 2016. The story has been updated to reflect that the resolution was passed in 2011. The Daily Reveille regrets this error.
