Belk gift goes to scholarship

Members of a legislative panel charged with recommending a solution to statewide university capital needs visited ECU recently for a first-hand look at some of the problems.

The Joint Select Committee on Higher Education Facilities Needs was briefed by officials from ECU as well as Elizabeth City State University and then toured the Flanagan Building and the construction site of the partially funed new Science and Technology Building.

Flanagan currently houses the School of Industry and Technology and the Department of Chemistry. Sen. Tony Rand, co-chair of the committee, said conditions in the (Flanagan) laboratories were “distressing.”

“We have to have the will to come up with the money” to solve the construction and renovation needs on state campuses, Rand said. The 19-member committee, mostly legislators, was formed last year after the Senate and House deadlocked over a way to finance University of North Carolina and state community college construction needs.

The Senate favored $3 billion in construction bonds, to be issued without a referendum, but the House wanted a much smaller amount and a public vote. The panel held its first meeting in Raleigh February 28. The Greenville visit on March 7 was the first of a series scheduled statewide through April 17. The General Assembly convenes on May 8. “We can’t continue to ask people to make do with 40- and 50-year-old laboratories,” Rand said. “We must go forward.”