Regents to vote on stadium

Today's meeting of the University Board of Regents will include a vote on the expansion of Michigan Stadium, speeches from student and faculty leaders and a student visit touted as a "field trip."

If approved today, a proposal to add 5,000 seats to Michigan Stadium will be implemented, making the stadium the largest outdoor sports arena in the nation.

Athletic Director Tom Goss said the additional seats will help the University accommodate a high demand for football tickets. Due to a surplus of ticket requests, first-year students received split-season ticket packages for this year's games. Goss said this will not happen again.

"I think it gives us an opportunity to not only add the 300 students that we had to split tickets with, but it also gives us the opportunity to offer some student ticket requests that we haven't been able to meet yet," Goss said.

As is customary with the November meeting, representatives from the Michigan Student Assembly and the Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs will present reports to the regents.

MSA President Mike Nagrant said he plans to discuss MSA's ongoing projects, including the new coursepack store, LSA's environmentally focused Winter theme semester and the student regent initiative.

"I am also going to lay a few ideas on the table, including a possible implementation of a fall break sometime in the future and the need to extend the hours in the graduate and law libraries," Nagrant said.

Nagrant added that he also is going to present to the regents an MSA resolution that asks that students be allowed to rush the football field following the Michigan-Ohio State game this Saturday.

Louis D'Alecy, chair of SACUA, said he will not bring any new business or proposals to the regents.

"There is nothing totally new because after every SACUA meeting, we send the regents notes from the meeting. It will be more of an overview of everything that has happened in the last year," D'Alecy said.

D'Alecy said he plans to present many topics from resolutions that SACUA already has passed, ranging from tobacco divestment to diversity statements.

He also wants to report about SACUA discussions of faculty access to the regents.

"I am going to talk about faculty access to the regents," he said. "We know that we have a strong position with the president inviting us to access the regents."

But Marie Ting, program coordinator for the Office of Academic Multicultural Initiatives, is hoping to also connect students to the board. Ting is bringing a group of minority students to observe the meeting.

"I call them regents' field trips," Ting said. "In general, students don't know what the regents are, what they do or what the meetings are about."

Ting said minority students often do not feel an attachment to the University. She hopes that bringing groups of minority students to the monthly meetings will help them feel more involved in the University.

"I feel that if students know who govern them, they will feel more connected," Ting said.

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