MCC builds a ghost town
Legend’s View
Mesa Community College has two campuses, their larger campus on Southern and Dobson, and the newer Red Mountain Campus.Most students attend class at the Southern and Dobson campus because they offer many more classes and availability, but the Red Mountain campus exists for those who may have to travel far to get to Southern and Dobson.
As convenient as the Red Mountain campus may be for those who live farther out in the East Valley, they do not offer enough classes or availability to actually make it beneficial.
Recently, the RM Campus completed a new addition to their few buildings, due to a lack of science labs here at the Southern and Dobson campus.
The Saguaro building will support the sciences and performing arts at Red Mountain.
The science portion of the building will have state of the art labs, classes, and undergraduate spaces, as well as a terrarium habitat for Sonoran Desert creatures.
The performing arts section of the building will have practice rooms, performance space and a multi-purpose classroom.
The eco-friendly building is without a doubt beneficial to the campus, it provides support and study spaces for students as well as tutoring and staff offices.
The building will open in early September and it will have a significant impact on the students who do attend the campus, but how many students actually use the facility to begin with?
The Red Mountain campus’s enrollment is up 20 percent this semester, but is still lacking enough students to even fill most classes.
According to MCC President Shouan Pan, the Saguaro building was created to respond to the increase in student enrollment at the campus, but the decision to build was made before Pan’s tenure at MCC.
The money for actual construction came from the 2004 bond election.
We put more money onto a campus that’s a ghost town full of high school students, when the money could have been used to support our campus with the new student increase.
There are more important things we should focus on like parking spaces, more faculty, and overall improvement among the Southern and Dobson campus instead of a new building that will be empty this semester.
