The student-led coalition for an alternatively-funded arena has stepped up its campaign to rally student support to end the partnership between the City of Chicago and DePaul University to build a new arena for the school’s basketball teams near McCormick place.
In preparation for their second meeting with Father Holtschneider and other members of the administration, the group is working to survey as many students, faculty and staff as possible.
According to Jonathan Slater, a member of Contingent for an Alternatively Funded Arena (CAFA), preliminary results of the survey – based on 300 respondents – is very much in favor of not building the arena.
The survey asks students to respond based on various factors including the effect the arena will have on the Bronzeville neighborhood to the necessity of the stadium in revitalizing the university’s basketball team.
“A lot of people just dont care about basketball, its not why they came to DePaul,” Slater said. “DePaul is more famous for its academics not its basketball team. Building a new arena isn’t going to magically make our team better.”
In addition to polling the DePaul community, CAFA is lobbying SGA student senators to pass a resolution in support of ending the partnership with The City. While Slater said there were several senators and junior senators who supported them, he did not want to give their names.
“The administration takes what SGA says very seriously,” Slater said. “We want to use this to show that SGA as a representative of the student body is in full support of withdrawing from the partnership.”
CAFA plans on introducing its resolution in the near future, but fully expects the resolution to pass.
“Opinions on the topic of the event center have been welcomed and members of CAFA have attended some of our meetings,” Casey Clemons, president of SGA, said. “But it’s not been a large focus this year.”
“We fully expect the resolution to pass because of the very widespread student support of our group throughout the student body, and SGA being representatives for those students we don’t see any reason why it won’t pass,” Slater said.
CAFA will be in the Student Center this week and in coming weeks to survey more students.