Shaw University has a land opportunity it hasn’t fully acted on.
There have been efforts and talk around development, but progress is slow while buildings age and financial pressure grows.
At some point, the strategy has to shift from discussion to action. It’s sad to see issues for students when the University could take action and provide resources to improve.
Six days later:
Loved the bit about the fire alarms not working…really hoping Shaw figures things out, and maybe starts on this redevelopment plan of theirs because this just sounds messy
Terrible for the students and to know they are paying $30k per year makes it even worse.
The rezoning for this area has been approved (https://www.shawu.edu/rezoning-approved-for-the-shawu-district/). They need to move forward with the city and capitalize on the assets they have (land). At this point the University is crumbling and the students are getting left out to dry.
I think it’s more accurate to say the students are getting left in to freeze.
Reading comments online that:
“Now the student have to go home and be virtual until further notice. But they can’t get anything out of their rooms.”
“The students are being displaced and told they have to be off campus by today until further notice.”
Safety and care are two obvious and major factors for student families. This is how you shoot yourself in the foot as a college. I sure hope they are helping the students with other accommodations until they can get back into their dorm rooms. My institution is spending over a million a year over the last 3 years to do a major fire alarm update for every building. Other deferred maintenance is on the back burner while we get this done, but it clearly needed to take priority. With SAU in such trouble, one would think that Shaw would be really sensitive to these sorts of issues …