DU may look forward to a new student center in the coming years. Plans were created last year under Chancellor Emeritus Robert Coombe that would increase the amount of space available for students in Driscoll Student Center. Now, a new initiative is being pushed forward that could change the original renovation plan.

“The current building…is 8 percent accessible to students,” said Adam Hammerman, a senior from Rockville, Maryland who is head of the Driscoll Student Center Renovation Committee and Secretary of Community Partnerships at USG. “The new plans […] have the building at 20 percent.”

Students currently have access to Driscoll Underground, Jazzman’s Café, Subway, and a few seating areas around the building. However, there is much more area in the building that is currently vacant or utilized by administrative offices and the bookstore.

The goal of the committee is to create a plan that would increase student accessibility to 50 percent: “The students didn’t really get input on the [original] plan,” said Hammerman, noting that it seems strange for a student center to be mostly inaccessible to students.

Hammerman says the new Anderson Academic Commons helped to satisfy academic needs for students, but there is also a need for places on-campus to meet the social needs of students. The previous plans for renovation, which were revealed in Feb. 2013, included a new food court area, a lodge-like community area, and a new meeting space.

The committee hopes to use a large amount of student input, especially from clubs that will be using the space, to guide the renovation. That process has already begun, but will grow in outreach once approval for new plans goes through administrative approval. The new plans could include features ranging from a completely new food court to a bowling alley, depending on where students show interest, according to Hammerman.
The main issues with the new student center plans come from funding challenges. With two buildings (the Anna and John J. Sie International Relations complex and the Daniel Felix Ritchie School of Engineering and Computer Science) on campus currently under construction, Hammerman says it may be difficult to fund the student center project until work on those two buildings is complete. Further, Hammerman says it may take a few years to make plans that will appropriately reflect students’ needs and desires.

Director of Driscoll John Nichols has previously shown support for plans with student input, pointing out that the initial renovation goals were to help students.

“The whole effort has been to bring that number [of students] up significantly and make a place students can hang out and socialize,” said Nichols in a Jan. 2014 Clarion article in which he also cited fundraising as a major obstacle to any renovation.

At the moment, most members of the committee are in USG and all of the members are students. The current goal is to get approval for new plans. Hammerman said they hope to get more involvement from the student body to start the process of making the plans soon. Ideally, members of any clubs and organizations that would like space in the new buildings will have representatives on the committee.

“It’s not going to happen overnight…[but] if we get some student uproar, this student center will get going,” said Hammerman.

Anyone interested in becoming involved in the Driscoll Student Center Renovation Committee can contact the committee at DUStudentCenter@gmail.com.