Bell tower selected for senior gift

The Student Government Association at Mercer University has tentatively assigned a bell tower as the tribute from the graduating class of 2012. This senior gift will be at the upcoming football stadium by the team house.
Christina Vasquez, the Senior Gift Chair of SGA, previously reported at an SGA meeting that the gift would be a bear paw statue over the football player entrance. Player’s would touch or high-five the paw before entering a game.
Vasquez, along with a new committee, convened with seniors to decide on what tribute they would like to contribute to the university and how to raise money for it. They decided on the bell tower since it was more plausible and better planned for than the bear paw.
Senior Senator Trenton White said in response to the bell tower, “The blueprints I have seen ensure that this year’s senior class will contribute to bringing a new aesthetic monument and tradition to campus.” There are currently three different blueprint renditions for the bell tower and a decision has yet to be made.
The plan for the bell tower is to toll it as the football players enter the field. Also to ring it in memory of veterans and other deceased Mercerians.
Other ideas raised at the meetings included a mural and a memorial for veterans who attended Mercer University. “The pricing didn’t work out (for the mural),” said Vasquez. Stephen Bradshaw, another Senior Senator, said other options included “a fountain on campus, a new Christmas tree on campus, as well as a mural made of automobile tags from all across the nation/world from students.”
The issue with the memorial was that there is one in Conference Room II of Connell Student Center, although the memorial is not up-to-date.
In previous years, there have been benches, a light post, and the bear statue outside the University Center dedicated to the graduating classes. Vasquez said, “The bear is a conglomeration of more than one senior gift.”
Senior Senator Matthew Hickman said he believes the senior gift “should have potential to be utilized by the majority of the students.”
To endorse a gift for the graduating class, the seniors needed to raise money with the help of SGA. Last semester, they organized a fundraiser called Pie Your Senator.
Pie Your Senator was an effort in which members of SGA allowed students to pie their faces for a dollar each. Douglas R. Pearson, the Dean of Students, was also present and students could pie him for five dollars.
“The purpose for the fundraiser,” said Vasquez was not only to raise money, but “to gather seniors for a student body effort.”
The class of 2012 and Mercer alumni co-sponsored for the donated bell tower.
Pearson introduced the idea of a bell tower to Vasquez, and the date for the unveiling is not yet planned.