Senators question using tuition dollars to tear down building

Posted

PIERRE – On Tuesday some state senators questioned the need to use funds raised by student tuition to pay for the demolition of Scobey Hall on the campus of South Dakota State University in Brookings. 

Sen. Jack Kolbeck, R-Sioux Falls, said tearing down the building was a matter of good economics for SDSU. Built in 1940 by the Works Progress Administration, the building would need $84,000 a year in maintenance and repair to stay open. 

Sen. Ryan Maher, R-Isabel, said the $593,000 budgeted to take down the building would be paid for using the Higher Education Facility Fund. That fund is created by using 20 cents from each tuition dollar. 

“It’s student tuition money that we’re going to put into a landfill,” Maher said. 

Going back through Board of Regents minutes, Maher said he found expenditures for Scobey Hall that included $200,000 for work on ventilation in 2016, $200,000 to replace leaky windows in 2012 and $90,000 for asbestos abatement in 2011. The repairs, and now the demolition, would be paid for with HEFF funds. 

“That’s my beef with the regents’ system,” Maher said. 

Sen. V.J. Smith, R-Brookings, said when he was a student leader at SDSU in the 1970s, he “railed” against using student tuition to pay for maintenance and repairs. Using those funds is a longstanding tradition, Smith said, adding, “Scobey Hall has to go.”

Smith noted that the windows that Maher referred to will be salvaged and used in other buildings on campus or sold as surplus.

Smith said a plaque in the building dedicates it to James O’Brian Scobey who, through his work in the territorial Legislature, secured Brookings as the location of SDSU. Smith added that the plaque is incorrect since Scobey’s first name was John.

“Hopefully the plaque will go with the building,” Smith said, “but we’re going to save the windows.”

HB1038, authorizing the demolition of Scobey Hall, passed through the Senate on a 26-7 vote. Having already passed through the House, it now goes to the governor for her signature.