The impressive new 65,000-square-foot Student Recreation Center is a campus addition that students, myself included, have anxiously anticipated. We were not disappointed. The building has nearly tripled in size and offers an impressive array of brand new equipment and activities, including rock climbing, racquetball, and two swimming pools.   

University tours are already parading prospective students through the rows of sweating academics on their shiny new machines, immediately sterilized by the Rec Center staff who sloth around looking for things to clean.

While I appreciate the cleanliness, I can’t help but wonder if UNCW is spreading funds evenly, especially after recent talks of cutting university sports. I’ve even heard rumors of Rec Center staff members going around with dust busters. When is a dust buster ever going to be practical in a 65,000-square-foot building?

This is especially irritating knowing that a trip to the bookstore at the beginning of the semester will be at minimum a 30 minute delay to my day. The Rec Center renovations took care of overcrowding, but the book store renovations definitely did not.

Even Randall Library got a little face-lift this summer, still partially underway, including fancy new fountains in front of Port City Java.

All of these improvements are lovely, but Morton Hall’s heating and air conditioning has been broken since before I have been enrolled here.

It doesn’t seem like we have a budget problem. The Recreation Center expansion was a student-initiated project that cost over $36 million and will be paid back as a tuition fee for full-time students over the next several decades. To put this into perspective, UNCW’s annual budget is $286 million. The state appropriates 33 percent, that’s $94,380,000, but the state only funds construction of academic buildings.

This is especially interesting because UNCW’s Architectural and Constructional Services’ Project Management Project Report shows six HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) projects for 2013.

Depaolo hall will have an HVAC unit installed; Dobo Hall and Social and Behavioral Sciences are both receiving “HVAC and Control improvements”; Fisher Student Union Center will have a study of their HVAC system conducted; University Apartment M had their HVAC system replaced; and Kenan House’s HVAC improvements are “nearing completion.”

The Kenan House is a mansion maintained by the university at 1705 Market St. where the chancellor resides. UNCW’s About UNCW webpage says it contains over a dozen rooms, eight fireplaces, six bathrooms, and molded ceilings.

“Historic Kenan House is the home of UNCW’s chancellor. It is a 7,500-square-foot Neoclassical Revival dwelling constructed in 1911 and deeded to the university by the Kenan family in 1968.”

The HVAC improvements to the Kenan House were part of $215,000 worth of repairs and improvements. 

I understand that the humanities are not a university priority, and that a building full of students reading in various sized chairs is not something you can boast about on a tour, but it is where an entire department of students and faculty spend most of their time.

Since maintaining the mansion on Market Street and repairing the AC in other campus buildings doesn’t seem to be a problem, I don’t see what the university’s issue with Morton is.