Dear Randy

At the Chancellor’s Liaison meeting last Wednesday, the University community said goodbye to its chancellor of the past year, James Woodward.

There were times this year — the new chancellor’s house, Talley Student Center and some conspicuous firings — that made me wonder if he was operating under some higher directive toward clearing house and doing tasks no new chancellor could ever accomplish. But in the end I was sad to see him go; I learned to know him as a man with an incredibly difficult job who was doing the best he could to help the University through one of its most high-profile messes since Jim Valvano’s firing. He had a plan and he stuck to it. For that, I can laud his efforts and confidently say he wasn’t temporary to any of us who knew him..

During his last months in office, he “teed up” many of the major campus issues for our new chancellor, Randy Woodson, to solve.

He’s given you a tough slate, Randy. With hope that you can impact change, I’ll welcome you to N.C. State — the war-torn battlefield that it is — and give a couple pointers on where we need some help.

Transportation

The Wolfline, as great a benefit as it is for students, is not a long-term solution to our campus transportation needs. If you take a look at the University’s physical master plan, we’ve already acknowledged the problem in transporting thousands of students the couple miles between Centennial and Main Campus. And I quote, “N.C. State is reserving a rapid-transit corridor for a future transit mode. While the technology has not been determined, [it] will carry great numbers of people to and from high-volume destinations and across campus.”

The solution the plan proposes would be a series of rapid-transit stops connecting the Brickyard, the new Talley Student Center, the corner of Avent Ferry Road and Western Boulevard, the research areas of Centennial Campus, the Oval on Centennial and the Park Alumni Center.

It’s a brilliant solution and — in my eyes, at least — is essential to the sustainability of the new campus. Without these vital connections, which would allow student movement en masse, the bus system will falter and fail, grinding campus travel to a halt. In my conversations with some University Transportation leaders, the idea of a monorail or other tram system has already been discarded as impossible to finance. Essentially, the plan outdates the reality. If this is truly the case, we need to come up with a solution fast. The campuses will permanently, and irreparably, split without it.

Talley Student Center

Randy, the other major issue you have to address is the rapidly shrinking blueprint of the aforementioned, new student center.

The new design has already been reduced by 7,000 square feet. Yes, the $110 million students are putting up toward the new building is part of a renovation project, not new construction, per se. But students were promised additional student areas — those areas are disappearing. We’re paying for this project and it’s looking increasingly like a fleecing.

Triangle-area construction costs are out of your control, but the transparency of the process isn’t. You must keep students aware of the updated plans and how their money is going to be spent.

This is just a sampling. You have a lot to deal with during the next months and years, including addressing the survival of this very newspaper, stagnant faculty growth and booming classroom sizes. You’re getting more than you signed up for, but we are eager to help you try and fix it.

Welcome to the Pack. Now, let’s get to work.