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WEDNESDAY Sept. 19, 2018 Vol. 102 • No. 6 www.therambler.org
Martin Center construction progresses Fall 2019 The Nick and Lou Martin Center will open
Photo by Hannah Onder The center of campus is fenced in for the Martin Center construction.
Hannah Onder hlonder@txwes.edu
Summer 2019 -Completing the building -Moving in the furniture -Moving in the staff
Fall 2018 -Poured first-floor cement slab -Erecting the steel on the building pad -Pouring the secondfloor cement -Setting the roof -Completing all the steel structure and floor setting
Summer 2018 -Construction started -Completition of underground utilities -Replaced ground soil -Drilled 130 piers -Finished perimeter grappling
Jada Elzie feels like the Nick and Lou Martin Center is something that should have been at Texas Wesleyan to begin with and is something she’d like to see before she graduates. “I feel like it’s something that should have happened a long time ago,” said Elzie, a junior business management major. “I don’t want to go to the library or sit in the lobby to chill. I think it will be a place where all the students can come together and do many different things.” Construction on the center began in June and is projected to be completed in June 2019 for an August opening. According to txwes.edu, the 44,000-square-foot building will be the biggest capital improvement project at Wesleyan in the last century, and it will be the central hub for student life and engagement on campus. “It’s been a fun project, but it’s kind of funny that it’s been two, two
and half years of design work for 12 months of construction,” said Brian Franks, the executive director of facilities, development, operations and emergency services. “There was a tremendous amount of behindthe-scenes action going on for the last two years, so it’s pretty exciting to see it come out of the ground finally. It’s a nice project because you don’t get to build university centers very often.” Franks said the center will include more dining options, a variety of comfortable seating and furniture, student engagement and admissions offices, study space, a game room, an atrium, a ballroom, the bookstore, and student organization meeting
Photo by Hannah Onder Construction on the Martin Center began in June and is expected to be completed by June 2019 in time for the fall 2019 semester.
space. “It will have a dining space that will accommodate about 65 people,” Franks said. “There’s a variety of seating such as banquets, bar tops, high tops, and tables. All of that’s being designed with comfort in mind. We want to encourage students, staff, and faculty to come hang out there.” Franks said the food places will be operated by the university’s dining service, Aramark. “We’ll probably brew Starbucks in the building with the agreement that
Aramark had with Starbucks they offer most of everything that typical Starbucks would have,” Franks said. “Tentatively, Aramark is looking at doing personal burritos and personal pizzas, so that’s two different spots similar to what they do at the WEE currently. Something that’s new to campus is Which Wich, which is in the last area there, and then it’s a large drink station with the freestyle soda machines.” Franks said the construction was
CONSTRUCTION. page 3
Students react to aftermath of Wesleyan’s deregistration policy Hannah Lathen
hrlathen@txwes.edu
In August, senior theater major Julian Rodriguez wrote an open letter to Texas Wesleyan University on Facebook about why he could not return in the fall and finish his degree. “Here I sit losing everything I have worked so hard for because you decided to implement a payment plan policy that has so negatively impacted many of your students,” wrote Rodriguez, who had been a resident assistant and a member of -Completition and numerous student organizations approval of paperwork and including Ram Squad. permits “Smaller. Smarter? Not anymore,” he wrote. Rodriguez is one of the students that have left Wesleyan since deregistration began in August. One hundred and 10 students are no longer at the university, Vice President of Finance and Administration Donna Nance wrote in an email. The deregistration policy at Wesleyan was first implemented this Graphic by Hannah Onder semester. The university’s website A rough timeline of the constuction states that students registered for of the center from Brian Franks. classes must “assume financial
Spring 2018
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Photo by Hannah Onder The Byrne Construction company has been contracted to build the Nick and Lou Martin Center.
responsibility for tuition and fees as established by the University and approved by the University Board of Trustees. Students must meet financial obligations or will be dropped from classes.” Students were deregistered from classes starting in August if they had not paid their bill in full or set up a
that be spring, students are coming in, they are signing up, taking out debt, in some cases, many thousands of dollars and then they are not able to pay that debt,” Veilleux said. “So that causes a couple of issues.” The first issue is that it puts the student in debt to the university. “That is unfair to the student
“We need to put in best practices that allow us to meet our financial obligations as a university as a business. We don’t do the student a favor and we don’t do the university a favor by not being able to pay our bills.” - John Veilleux payment plan. Vice President of Enrollment, Marketing and Communications John Veilleux said the policy was put in place because the school was finding itself in debt at the end of each semester from students not paying their bills. “Whether that be fall, whether
because then that student can’t get their transcript. That student can’t move on to another university,” he said. “They are sort of locked in because they now have this debt that they have to pay off.” The second issue, Veilleux said, is that Wesleyan can’t appropriately budget for the school year and then
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work within it without funds from student enrollment. “By bringing in students into the university and not providing that revenue or making arrangements to pay for it, it doesn’t help the university meet its budget obligations and therefore bills, lights, paying faculty, making sure kids have supplies in the classroom or whatever the case may be, all the various costs that go with running a university,” he said. Veilleux said last year Wesleyan budgeted to be $600,000 in bad debt but ended up being more than $1 million in bad debt because students did not pay their bills. “We need to put in best practices that allow us to meet our financial obligations as a university as a business,” he said. “We don’t do the student a favor and we don’t do the university a favor by not being able to pay our bills.” The deregistration is set to stay in place, he said. “There are going to be opportunities that go along with the service of deregistration. I know there have been some hiccups along the way with payment plans,” he
DEREGISTRATION. page 3
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Texas Wesleyan’s Student Government Association will be sponsoring the first 100 student runners in the 5K run in November. SGA passed the bill at Friday’s general business meeting and will allocate $1,000 to the Texas Wesleyan Alumni Association, which hosts the run. Athletic Representative Lynzie Moore presented the bill...