Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Again, Cole Hall (NIU) razing "off the table"

Hurray for some tiny bit of sanity from the craziness that occurred on February 14th at Northern Illinois University. Cooler heads might prevail in the "tear down Cole Hall" outcry and they just might not destroy the building.

State Senator Brad Burzynski said this: ""Demolition is going to be taken off the table, and what I think is going to occur now is there is going to be discussion on campus of if there is good use for the building, what it should be and those kinds of things," he told the paper." Finally a legislator who has the courage to say what should have been said about this building.

Check out these two articles about this situation.
  1. Daily Herald: Cole Hall demolition 'off the table'?
  2. Chicago Tribune: NIU president pulls back from call to raze Cole Hall, Peters Aims to collect student, faculty views
  3. Daily Illini: Rebuilding NIU shouldn't be about politics
One of the best quotes: "Tearing down the building is not going to heal wounds," history professor David Kyvig said a few hours after the governor's news conference last week. Kyvig had taught this semester in Cole Hall. "I do feel it's foolish for the university to be doing something so quickly."

Also: "Other students and professors said there were more pressing needs on campus, from aging classroom buildings to outdated elevators." This is so true. Up until 2/14/08, I'm not sure if Governor Blago even knew where DeKalb and NIU was. He has been an obvious foe of adequately financing our college campuses (U of I and NIU are perfect examples), so it was so incredibly apparent that he was using the tragedy to grandstand (AGAIN are we surprised by his behavior? NOOOOOO). Shame on Blago & Durbin. Shame, shame, shame.
at