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Questions & Answers

By Sarah Murphy sity’s commitment

NEWS EDITOR to the Student

Centre is a lot

Slow and bigger then what

steady is allthatcan \.. originally

be said for UPEI negotiated [a nam-

Student Union ing gift of $ 3000],”

fundraising efforts. says Gillan. “About Student

Union Executive Council admits to being unsure about the start of the construction of the new Student Centre. “Nothing is definite anymore,”admits Stephen Lewis, Student Union Vice President Finance. ' To hasten and to ensure conti- nuity of the Union’s fundraising endeav- our, UPEI adminis- tration was encour-

aged to participate. “The project is led by the Student Union,” says H. Wade MacLauchlan UPEI President and Vice-Chancellor. “The administration is happy to work in cooperation with the SU ona project that means so much to students and to the

Advancement Services, believes the university's participation is much more impor- tant

“The univer-

a year ago, the president of the day said ‘you know what, it’s going to be years before we get a Student Centre if the university doesn’t take this on’ and that’s what happened.”

Gillan added that the Union’s fundraising cam-

‘paign for anew Student Centre has become the top fundraising priority for the university. This comes as a way of thanking students for their commitment to the renovation of sci- ence facilities on campus and the construction of the K.C. Irving Chem- istry Centre.

“Just for

[the] faculty and staff campaign, and we are not finished, we are up to almost $50 000.00 for the student centre,” says Gillan.

Administra- tion and Student Union executive members all agree that much is still in the planning stage, although students are pushing for fast results.

What started out as a 3 million dollar endeavour may now be closer to a 4 million dollar project. The serv- ices to be offered in the new building will dictate it’s price tag, and therefore the goals of the ongoing fundraising cam- paign.

“Details of what would be included in the building, of fin- ishes, of design, etc., are still-to be deter- mined beyond the

preliminary stages. As with any con- struction project, there are design and bidding phases that ultimately deter- mine the resources required,” MacLauchlan says. Marjorie Brown, former President of the University of Regina Student Union warns UPEI Student Union about administra- tion involvement. “The strug- gle to get the new building was long and arduous and if we have one piece of advice it would be to be wary in trusting the involve- ment of the univer- sity administration in any such endeav- our,” Brown says. Lewis remains confident. “T think what will happen is that we’ll end up raising enough money, we just don’t know how long it will take,” he said. Gillan

agrees. “We [will]

just keep asking until we come up with it. The goal is certainly to raise this [money] as quickly as possible

but it is pretty hard ~

to predict right now exactly when that will happen,” says Gillan. “The cam- pus community has kicked in, so now we will go to the wider community and ask.”

At this point, Gillan hopes to raise at least $150 000.00 from the campus community, including faculty, staff, and alumni. Gillan concedes that students have made a major contribu- tion.

No requests have been made upon the PEI gov- ernment, who previously donated 2.5 million dollars toward the Science Centre’s 7 million dollar cost.

This may come as a surprise,

when compared to Memorial Universi- ty’s fundraising efforts in view of their soon to be completed new University Centre.

A strong private and public sector partnership has supported MUN and their Opportu- nity Fund in making much of their fundraising goals achievable. As individual, founda- tion and corporate donors contribute to the campaign, their gifts are being matched dollar-for- dollar by the Gov- ernment of New- foundland and Labrador.

No corpo- rate donors have approached the Union or the Ad- ministration.

“There is a lot of talk about that [corporate dona- tions],” explains Gillan, aware of the university commu- nity’s apprehension towards corporate involvement.

“When we launched the campaign to build

-along with a mil- lion dollars got to | put their name on that building. That © was it, no strings

attached, they have

~

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