On a trip to Florida, I had time to kill so I wandered around the Florida State University campus. In the college of film studies, I happened across a huge theater room with stadium theater seats, a huge projector screen, and an editing bay in the center of the room. ACU didn’t have anything like this on its campus. I set out to change that.
I started asking questions when I got back to school for the fall semester of my senior year. I was starting a new movie club called The Cinema Society, and I wanted to see which room on campus might work best as a theater for the club. I bounced around between a few people until I got in contact with the head of campus IT. He told me that every room across all buildings had the exact same AV setup, 1080 projector and stereo audio. Not even the auditorium spaces had anything better. Except for one room with 4 channel audio. However, this room only sat 50 and the chairs were an uncomfy plastic bolted to the floor, not good for movie watching.
As luck would have it though a plan was in the works to renovate the room into a theater space but all they were missing was money. Summer Walters, the head of the project, told me the renovations to the room were appraised for $60,000. She had managed to pull together $50,000 from a whole host of departments and fundraising including an art sale, equipment donations, and left over budget from another building renovation, but she had run out of people to ask. If the rest of the money wasn’t raised by the end of November, the $20,000 left over from the other renovation would expire at the end of the quarter and she would lose access to it.
Even though Ms. Walters had run out of places to raise money and was ready to give up on the effort. I convinced her to wait and see if I could come up with the remaining $10,000. As a senior senator of the student government, I had access to a small budget the senate is allowed to use for campus improvements and events. The senate definitely didn’t have $10,000 and even half of that would wipe out a majority of its budget. But I believed I could convince the senate that it was the best thing we could do for students.
I wrote a bill asking for $5,000 for the renovation from the student senate for the project under the condition that the new theater be considered the class gift of 2024. I then approached the dean of the admissions department, who I heard had extra money in their budget, and asked if her department would match the $5,000 from the senate to complete the total renovation budget. Hearing the usefulness the theater would be for her department and all students, she agreed.
My bill passed a vote from the student senate with a staggering majority and the renovations to the room took place over the winter break. At the beginning of the spring semester, I helped put the vinyl sign up on the theater’s doors and tested out the HDMI plug in in the middle of the room. I had advocated for the plug so that students could edit films in the theater like I had seen at Florida State.
The Cinema Society and SGA hosted the grand opening of the theater with a showing of The Greatest Showman. So many people showed up that we overfilled the room’s now 82 seat capacity. People were sitting on the floor and waiting in the hall so we offered to do a second later showing and we almost filled the room for that one too.
Needless to say, the theater was a big hit and much appreciated by the student body. I hope the theater continues to serve student organizations, film and multimedia majors, and regular friend groups for years to come.
