Aug. 23 — Overcast skies and light rain didn’t stop the grand opening ceremony Saturday morning for the freestanding Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History — an event that marked the culmination of more than a decade of controversy, advocacy, planning and fund raising.
Student Congress officials said Wednesday that they are prepared to finance student campaigns even if all 55 candidates who so far expressed interest in running qualify for the Feb. 11 ballot. The total campaign costs for this year's elections could amount to as much as $4,820, assuming that each prospective candidate gathers the necessary signatures to be placed on the ballot and that there are runoffs for student body president and senior class officers.
As UNC's Advisory Committee on Transportation's long-term parking and transportation plan progresses through the next several months of approval processes, it is uncertain whether it will remain in its current, largely conceptual form. The five-year plan includes the construction of new parking decks, changes to roads and intersections, alternative transportation and the modification of parking policy and structures.
The Tuition Task Force will meet Dec. 19 to vote on which of three tuition increase proposals to submit to the UNC Board of Trustees. After months of debate, mostly centering on the plan's distribution of tuition revenue, the group will choose from three specific proposals crafted by task force Co-Chairman Provost Robert Shelton.
Private, not state, funds will pay for outgoing Vice Chancellor and University Counsel Susan Ehringhaus' salary when she leaves at the end of December to work for two higher education organizations in Washington, D.C. Ehringhaus will return in the fall to teach at the School of Law. The UNC-Chapel Hill Foundation, part of the University's Endowment Fund, will provide the money to pay more than $376,000 over the next two years to Ehringhaus, who has an annual salary of $188,321.
The UNC Board of Trustees Finance Committee learned Tuesday that UNC is financially sound despite the volatile economy. The committee, made up of BOT members Paul Fulton, Nelson Schwab and Karol Mason, met at the Wilson Library Assembly Room to hear reports about the University's Endowment Fund, its investment funds and the financial structure of the University. Trustee Jim Hynes was not in attendance.
Renovations to Memorial Hall scheduled to begin Nov. 30 could be postponed because of construction bids that are pricier than designers had anticipated. Batson-Cook Construction's bid of $12.9 million, the cheapest of four bids, is still $1.3 million higher than the project's estimated base bid for construction cost of $11.6 million, making it the first bid to be over an estimate this year for campus construction projects. But Bruce Runberg, associate vice chancellor for planning and construction, said the bid is reasonable.
Starting today, students who normally park in the S5 lot will have to move to the S11 lot to make way for construction on the new Ramshead parking deck. The $65 million facility, to be located between Kenan Field House and the George Watts Hill Alumni Center, will have a 700-space, three-level parking deck topped with a two-story campus recreation building and a two-story student dining facility.
UNC-Chapel Hill trustee Richard Stevens, who some student leaders call an advocate for their cause, easily won election to the N.C. Senate on Tuesday night. Stevens, a Republican, received 62 percent of the votes cast in District 17, which consists of the southern half of Wake County. He will resign from the UNC-CH Board of Trustees on Jan. 29, after which he will begin his term in the state legislature. "I'll be leaving the Board of Trustees but not forgetting Chapel Hill," Stevens said Tuesday evening at his victory celebration.
A referendum calling for an increase in the student activity fee has been a topic of heated debate among student leaders since Student Congress voted Oct.
