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CATALYST
BRIEFS SRQ WATER pg.
April 17, 2019 VOLUME XXXVIII ISSUE 9
New College of Florida's student newspaper
Finalizing the Four Winds plan BY ADRIANA GAVILANES The Four Winds Café closed for the spring term of 2019 and as the semester is coming to an end, plans to reopen the café are beginning to unfold. Students and faculty have been working to ensure the return of Four Winds. Professor of Mathematics David Mullins wrote an email to a selection of administrators and students proposing a plan to reopen the Four Winds and emphasizing the importance of a social space like the Four Winds on campus. On Mar. 25, 2019, the letter was sent to President Donal O’Shea, Provost Barbara Feldman, Associate Provost Suzanne Sherman, Faculty Chair Keith Fitzgerald and Catalyst General Editor Audrey Warne. “While I was taking an afternoon stroll yesterday, inventorying the mulberry trees around campus, I couldn’t help but notice how quiet the campus was, especially on the Westside,” Mullins said in the email. “I started thinking more about social spaces and the social role the Four
photo courtesy of New College Archives
Students spending time at the Four Winds Café back in the day. Winds Café plays.” In the past decade, the New College Student Alliance (NCSA) has kept the Four Winds from drowning through providing subsidy support. The Four Winds has never been able to turn a profit in its existence. The years the Four Winds did not incur a net loss, namely in 2012, 2014, 2015 and 2016, was due to the funds the NCSA and Sodexo, New College’s food service provider at the time, afforded. The profit and loss sheet
reveals $47,000 was provided in 2012, $20,000 in 2014, $22,00 in 2015 and $13,100 in 2016. “When it was functioning, it did much more than serve food,” Mullins said in the email. “It also served as a place where students and others can congregate, study, interact and listen to music. There is certainly a death of such spaces on campus.” In the email, Mullins suggested a business plan with an estimated cost of $3,000 to reopen the Four Winds, cutting the total expenses in the operating year of 2018 by approximately $5,000. Mullins encouraged the Four Winds to either request an increase of funds from within New College or to seek donations outside of the New College Foundation for tax purposes. Moreover, strategies made by Mullins to cut costs included targeting small structural problems. “Once coffee or tea runs out for the week,
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Of the three Pei courts, First Court is the most lacking in amenities. Second Court has a laundry room, and both Second and Third have lounges. What does First Court have? Water damage. “Our oldest residence hall obviously has some areas we want to improve upon,” Senior Associate Dean of Student Affairs Mark Stier said. “We have people working on plumbing, bathrooms, walls, the floor—the whole nine yards. Hopefully we’ll have those [rooms] back online by August.” Serious water damage was found in two First Court dorm rooms. The dorms, one directly beneath the other, were shown to have damage on the floor and roof. The Physical Plant Department is taking action to repair this damage, but the dorms have been taken offl ine for the remainder of the semester. The rooms being renovated will be brought up to the standard of quality found inside the Third Court rooms and will be opened next semester.
“The style of construction has some shortcomings,” Director of Facilities and Construction Alan Burr said. “It allows water to infiltrate the building where the sliding glass doors and the floor meets. There’s a construction joint that the water gets in and goes in to [below the floor].” The budget for the renovations is $180,000, which includes the cost of design as well as construction. The modification of the balconies to prevent this water damage from occurring is very expensive, and a full-scale renovation of every balcony in First Court is far outside the Physical Plant’s current budget. The refurbishment of Third Court that occurred in 2014 cost approximately $2 million. Furthermore, the modification to the balconies made to stop water from infiltrating the interior of the building was not universally successful, with several of the Third Court balconies still vulnerable to water damage. The fi x being used for the First Court rooms is new and, so far, successful. Four rooms are being officially worked on, which Stier hopes to increase over the summer. Plans
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Steven Keshishian wins 2nd term as NCSA president BY HALEY BRYAN
for fi xing the other balconies of First Court are not concrete, however. “We’ll go after the other [rooms] that have water damage first,” Burr said. “We’ll address the other ones when we have the resources available, probably whether or not they fail. It’s just a matter of when, we think.”
Students eagerly awaited the results of the late spring election which announced second-year Steven Keshishian as New College Student Alliance (NCSA) president for the 20192020 school year. A total of 265 votes were cast in the preference-ranked online voting system, with Keshishian securing the school presidency for his second term with 128 votes against second-year and write-in candidate Joseph Daniels’ 112 votes in a run-off election. Run-off voting occurs if a candidate does not receive more than half the votes for the first-choice preference, and eliminates the least-voted for candidate and subsequently redistributes these votes among the remaining candidates based on the ballot’s preference. Run-off voting occurs until a candidate receives more than half the votes. Keshishian did receive the majority votes for the first-choice president with 118 votes compared to Daniels’ 109 votes and first-year Izaya Myles’ 28 votes. Along with serving as the NCSA Co-president for the 2018-2019 school year, Keshishian is also a board member for Florida Student Association and recently has been nominated to run as the external vice president, which is a position that will allow the NCSA to start lobbying in Tallahassee for all of the students in Florida. Resuming his position as the school’s president, Keshishian shared his excitement and intent to help the school and students thrive in spite of the hostility and frustration that erupted among the student body during this election process. “I’m really excited about being a second-term president,” Keshishian
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First Court water damage and renovations result of design flaw BY IZAYA GARRETT MILES
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Izaya Garrett Miles/Catalyst
Balconies are a major concern for the renovations.
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beaux-arts ball
minding the gap
director q’s