The UB Council discussed the $650 Boldly Buffalo campaign, One World Café and a tentative on-campus food pantry at its summer meeting on June 11. The nine-person council is made up of prominent community members, alumni and student representative Mike Brown.
Various administrators were in attendance, including new Athletic Director Mark Alnutt. President Satish Tripathi was stuck in a Chicago airport and could not attend the meeting.
Graham Hammill, vice provost for educational affairs and dean of the graduate school, announced construction will begin on the newly named One World Café in the fall and is expected to be completed during the 2020-21 academic year.
The dining hall will be housed in an all-glass building connecting Norton Hall to the Capen Hall entrance of Silverman Library. It will be a two-story building with 500 to 650 seats, a hearth area and multi-purpose rooms.
Hammill reinforced the purpose of the eatery as a method to match the growing dietary needs of students while promoting the education of students as global citizens. The dining hall will have five dining stations, each focusing on a different part of the world.
“When you come to North Campus, it’s often really difficult to know where to go. This will serve as a beacon and show prospective students and new students where the center of campus is,” Hammill said.
Rodney Grabowski, vice president of university advancement, delivered an update on the university’s Boldly Buffalo campaign announced in April on UB Giving Day. As of the council’s June 11 meeting, the campaign raised $457.7 million of its $650 million goal from more than 61,100 donors, according to Grabowski.
Grabowski said he expects donations to reach more than $460 million by the end of June. The campaign will hold regional fundraising events between November and next June in cities with large concentrations of UB alumni. Grabowski said the energy surrounding the campaign hasn’t ceased since its announcement, an encouraging sign that its historic goal may be achievable.
“We’re planning already through 2020 and beyond because we do not have an end date for this campaign,” Grabowski said. “This campaign will last as long as the university feels that the marketing, branding and fundraising is working.”
Student representative Brown, a senior computer science and political science major, brought up issues concerning an on-campus food pantry and awareness concerning student’s mental health during his report.
Brown raised concerns about the absence of an on-campus food pantry after a National College Health Assessment report showed 25 percent of UB students experience some degree of food insecurity. The statistic coincides with complaints from graduate students who have spent the last year protesting for a “living wage.”
The university partnered with the Presbytery of Western New York to create an off-campus food bank. However, Brown expressed concerns regarding accessibility to the South Campus location, lack of advertisement and issues with it being housed in a religious building.
Council chairman Jeremy Jacobs questioned the need to provide students with free food in addition to free tuition under the Excelsior Scholarship.
“The state has now agreed to no tuition, embracing that financial burden to the state instead of perhaps students or their parents,” Jacobs said. “At what point do we believe we should be feeding students as well as educating them for free?”
Brown also called for more mental health awareness on campus.
He informed council members that during the last 12 months, 53 percent of college students reported feeling hopeless and 39 percent reported feeling so depressed it was difficult to function, according to a 2016 survey by the American College Health Association.
The council also approved the Dr. Romesh K. and Mrs. Neelam Kohli Medical Student Scholarship Fund, the Mario and Donna Rocci scholarship in the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences and the Rosenthal Family Fund in the School of Dental Medicine. It also named the Moog professor of Innovation award in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
Only one of the three named scholarships will be available to students in the fall, as two of the three will be realized upon the death of the donors, according to Joelle Haseley, executive assistant to the vice president.
Max Kalnitz is the senior news editor and can be reached at max.kalnitz@ubspectrum.com
