The fact that some of the University's buildings are in need of renovation may not occur to students and faculty seeking refuge from the rainy wrath of Hurricane Floyd.
Nevertheless, the dilapidated condition of 100 year-old Fayerweather, Rouss and Cocke Halls has come to the attention of some members of the University community.
Some plans for renovation are in the works, but await funding approval from the General Assembly. The University has requested $400,000 to begin the $5 million renovation of Fayerweather Hall and a Capital Projects fund for Cocke is scheduled to be submitted at the next session of the General Assembly, Assoc. College Dean Richard Sundberg said. Sundberg said renovating Rouss and Cocke would cost between $6 and $8 million each.
The University's Board of Visitors also will meet next week, and the conditions of the University's buildings will no doubt be a subject of discussion, Board members said.
"The best we can hope for is to schedule an agenda [of reparations] for the next five to 10 years," student Board member Robert Schoenvogel said. "That is what I'm going to push for."
Board members toured Fayerweather last year and were able to see the extent of the deterioration of the historic building for themselves, Board member James C. Wheat III said.
"Rather than tear down, we should renovate," Schoenvogel said.
Fayerweather, originally constructed to serve as a gymnasium, now houses the studio division of the art department. Some regard the location as aesthetically pleasing, if not practical.
"Fayerweather has lots of character. It's kind of dirty and old, not right for studio art, but peculiar and quirky," Assoc. Art Prof. Bill Bennet said.
Others view the building to be seriously inadequate.
"In essence, [Fayerweather] has no infrastructure," Capital Programs Division Manager Elizabeth Lawson said. "It needs to be remade into a new building for the 21st century."
Rouss and Cocke were built as classroom buildings and according to Lawson, they "need to be totally renewed and restored."
Economics Prof. Kenneth Elzinga is a member of a committee preparing plans for the renovation of Rouss.
"We are planning a type of environment that would be congenial to student-faculty interaction," Elzinga said. "Economics lives in a tired but wonderful building."
The less-than-stellar condition of these buildings is not a recent development, however. Throughout the last decade, projects were presented to the General Assembly concerning the renovation of the three buildings, but were never funded.
"In the 1990s [there was] little funding for buildings in the state," Sundberg said.
The Board, which approves proposals before they are sent to the General Assembly, has tried over the last decade to obtain the much-needed funding, but their requests went unanswered, Lawson said.
The drought "spoke to the general lack of [state] funding to the University," she said.
To ensure fulfillment of the University's need, funds must come from additional sources as well.
"We need groups such as the Alumni Association to collaborate," said Wheat, who serves on the Board's Buildings and Grounds Committee.
Building conditions continue to deteriorate as the need for reparations are neglected, Lawson said.
"The more it's postponed, the more costs go up," she said.
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