Students at the University of Illinois Springfield Thursday voted in favor of building a student union and increasing fees to pay for it – but only when the building opens.
A total of 432 students voted to approve a fee increase, which will finance much of the construction, while 109 students voted “no.” The vote was taken online.
The project next will go through a planning process involving campus and U of I administrators and an outside design firm. The plan still needs to be approved by both the U of I Board of Trustees and the Illinois Board of Higher Education.
“It was an idea whose time had come,” said John Tienken, the UIS student representative on the U of I board and co-chairman of the Student Union Committee. “The 4-to-1 margin by which this was approved clearly sent a message that it’s time. It’s almost a complete reversal of the vote two years ago.
If the project gains final approval, the student union will be on the South Quad, next to University Hall and in front of the soccer fields.
The vote was featured in an April 21, 2012, article in The State Journal-Register.
Read the article online
