Kaleb Poor
Staff Writer
Before we renovate Corbett Pool, let’s deal with the 4,000 students at UW who don’t know where their next meal might come from.
Yes, 37% of UW’s 12,000 students are some degree of food insecure, meaning that they are struggling with hunger. Meanwhile, the lawmakers in the Wyoming legislature have spent a significant amount of time this session debating how much money should be devoted to UW’s capital construction projects, which include renovations to Corbett Pool, War Memorial Stadium, and the law school.
There is no question that Corbett Pool, the home of UW’s swim and dive teams, is an embarrassment to the university. Its locker rooms are padded by nasty red carpeting, the pool lacks quality diving blocks and the state of the facility as a whole is decrepit and disgraceful.
You know what else is disgraceful? 4,000 hungry students is disgraceful. A 55% graduation rate is disgraceful. A university faculty whose faith in the existence of academic freedom has been shaken is disgraceful. Prioritizing capital construction over university functionality and the wellbeing of students is disgraceful and those who have precipitated this situation should be ashamed of themselves.
To those lawmakers who believe renovating Corbett Pool is a priority: I invite you to visit campus sometime to see the food cabinets scattered across campus. I invite you to hear the stories of students who have been going to bed hungry so that they can pay for books and parking passes. I invite you to come stand by your decision to prioritize the aesthetics of a swimming pool over the education and wellbeing of UW students, and to do it to our faces.
Why is it that the state can find $110 million for a new engineering building (which, by the way, seems to contain more empty space than classrooms), but students have to use their fee money to stock food pantries? Why are staff and faculty paying out of their own pockets to make sure students do not go hungry while Craig Bohl rakes in a $100,000 bonus for winning a single game against Missouri?
If the elected representatives in the legislature or UW’s Board of Trustees continue to prioritize construction and growth, that is their decision. They have that power. However, then they need to acknowledge every dollar spent on new buildings, lucrative compensation packages, and marketing campaigns is a dollar not spent on any of UW’s other problems.
UW – and Wyoming as a whole – has limited resources. So when those resources are spent on something, it is a statement declaring that something to be a priority. Where and how UW spends money is a statement in what UW’s leadership deems most important.
So, if the Board of Trustees wants to continue spending en masse on capital construction, and if the legislature approves of that spending, then both need to acknowledge that in doing so, they are declaring capital construction to be more important than things like food security and graduation rates, which continue to be addressed only in passing.
UW’s students have learned to prioritize. We buy books instead of meals. We sacrifice our dignity and take from food pantries because we have no other options. We redistribute the money we pay in fees to help feed one another.
It’s time all you powerful people start pulling your weight in this.
