IMU Back Alley’s future uncertain

IU alumnus Nick Hoagland has fond memories of bowling with his friends at the Indiana Memorial Union bowling alley when he was a student in the mid-1990s. He remembers sitting hours upon hours at “the blue table,” chatting with his friends as they bowled.

“It’s a place where students congregate,” he said. “You learn to socially interact with people, and those are the things I took from college. And those things aren’t things I learned in the classroom.”

Now, as a chief operations officer for the trucking company Backhaul Direct in Indianapolis, Hoagland and his company wish to keep the bowling alley open for future students.

The company made a proposal on Oct. 24 to IMU Executive Director Bruce Jacobs and IMU Assistant Director Rob Meyer to give the IMU between $250,000 and $300,000 to renovate and keep open the bowling alley.

The money would be allocated within the next 10 years, Hoagland said. He said his company also offered $10,000 in scholarships for the bowling leagues.

Backhaul Direct made this proposal in response to the recent space allocation study conducted at the University.

However, Hoagland said, the University has yet to respond.

“We’re really sitting on our hands and knees, wanting to give IU this money,” he said. “But we’re sort of out of sight, out of mind.

It just sounds odd that no one would be interested in our money.”

Jacobs said although there is a Review and Recommendation Committee to look at the space in the IMU, “nothing has been finalized yet,” he said, adding that the committee is trying to make the IMU more student friendly.

“The IMU has been the heartstone of the campus,” he said. “That’s what we continue to be. We continue to be the ‘living room’ on campus.”

Review and Recommendation Committee co-chair Elizabeth Retana said there are still conversations going on as to how to use the Union space, as there has been since September.

She said it is still a “work in progress,” and the committee wants to make sure all the students’ needs are fulfilled.

“It’s about what students want as a whole,” she said. “But we have to remember it is 2009 and things have changed.”

Hoagland said it’s been “frustrating” receiving only one response from the University, an e-mail that said no decision has been made.

Hoagland fears the IMU will get rid of the bowling alley and replace it with more offices because the bowling alley is a big space that isn’t making much revenue.

“What the University seems to be saying is that money means more than services,” he said. “The University is succumbing to the almighty dollar.”

Graduate student Adam Svoboda, an instructor at Union Studios, is concerned about the prospects of the bowling alley closing down, as Union Studios and many different organizations also use the space.

“Bloomington would lose one more creative outlet,” he said.

Juniors Jessica Howell and Joe Dillon said the possibility of closing down the bowling alley is a “terrible idea,” adding that there aren’t many places in Bloomington to bowl.

“Why would you close it down?” Howell said. “That’s not benefiting the students at all.”
Hoagland said closing the bowling alley would be counter to what the University should provide to students.

“I look back at stuff, and I learned how to be a business person just by talking to people,” he said. “We want to make sure students have the chance to recreate and socialize like we did.”