The Mac Weekly

Issue date: 9/7/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Aaron Brown As MARC construction continues to bang on, some students are beginning to voice their complaints.

As students return to the red brick of Carnegie and Old Main and the lusciously green quads across campus, they are also greeted with the smell of tar and the sound of roofers issuing from the MARC construction site.

The construction of the MARC, which will cost about $41 million and is scheduled to open on Aug. 1, 2008, has already affected many students upon their return to campus by making rooms in Kirk uncomfortable, the library a less quiet place to study and working out in the heat unbearable.

This semester's preseason athletes, who mostly arrived in August, were some of the first to encounter the difficulties of the limited access to facilities.

"I think administratively, preseason always presents its own challenges," Director of Athletics Travis Feezell said. "Especially without the locker rooms and training rooms we used to have, the teams are really on top of each other. We've even cannibalized a bathroom to make another training room…but I really haven't heard any kind of griping about it, from coaches or students."

First-year students seem especially keen to make the necessary sacrifices caused by the construction for the end result of a top-of-the-line facility.

"I didn't really think about the new pool and other facilities at first," swim team member Kate Vermann '11 said. "But after doing a few samplers at a bunch of schools and seeing [Macalester's] crusty decaying facilities, I thought a new pool would be a nice perk. I feel like it's a great thing…to have the construction because it shows that the school is trying to improve and better accommodate its students."

Some upperclassmen are not as accepting of the construction, especially since seniors will graduate before it is completed.

Erin Leisz '08 expressed frustration at the situation.

"I'm upset that we don't have a facility to use this year," Leisz said. "I live off campus and I don't have access to the Turck exercise room…all for a center that we won't get to use."

While students do have access to the limited exercise equipment at the Athletics

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