AT&T customers on the College of William and Mary campus may have an upcoming political conference to thank for improved cell phone service in the near future.

Progress has been made on the distributed antenna systems project, which will improve wireless service from AT&T and other carriers on campus. Some estimates predict that the project will reach completion some time in the next three months.

Doug Marty, director of information technology for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, and Courtney Carpenter, chief information officer of Information Technology at the College, confirmed that the distributed antenna system is completed but that the various wireless carriers are still finalizing their equipment on the system.

It was the National Governors Association Conference, which will be held in Colonial Williamsburg July 13-15, 2012, that picked up the project’s pace, according to representatives from the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. The annual conference, which will take place at the height of the 2012 presidential campaign, is predicted to draw about 1,000 attendees.

“The National Governors Association Conference was an impetus for moving [the project] along,” Bob Taylor, vice president for administration and finance at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, said.

The system includes antenna located at Zable Stadium, the Marshall-Wythe School of Law, the College’s Corner House, behind the Williamsburg Inn, behind the Williamsburg Visitor Center, and in the Capitol and Governor’s Palace.

“We want to solve this problem for everybody, and the National Governor’s Association Conference has been really helpful in speeding this up,” Marty said.

AT&T Spokeswoman Gayle Kansagor said there was currently no expected completion date for the distributed antenna system.

“Enhancing service in Williamsburg is a priority for AT&T and we are working as quickly as possible with our partners to improve service on your campus. At this point, it isn’t possible to give you an estimated time of completion,” Kansagor said in an email.

Although antennae delays persist, AT&T announced plans Thursday to activate new mobile broadband cell sites for the residents and businesses of Williamsburg situated along Ironbound Road and John Tyler Highway in James City County.

“Customers in the residential and commercial areas along Ironbound Road and John Tyler Highway in James City County will now be able to use their wireless devices to access their favorite apps like Facebook and Twitter, send photos to friends and surf the web, thanks to network improvements recently made by AT&T,” Kansagor said in an email.

The new sites will improve the performance of mobile devices and services for AT&T customers in Williamsburg.

The network will involve the traditional towers but will not incorporate the proposed distributed antenna system that will be built on campus and in Colonial Williamsburg.

Carpenter and Marty said that the wireless carriers have been testing their components of the system on the distributed antennae systems and that completion was planned for early 2012, potentially early December 2011.

“They’re literally testing every day. You should see something soon with them,” Marty said. “We’re hoping to have the system completed by Grand Illumination.”

Marty emphasized that the distributed antenna system requires careful and complex implementation and that it takes time to become fully functional.
“I don’t mean to sound trivial, but this really is like rocket science,” he said.

The new distributed attentae systems were first announced in late September 2010.

The first projected date of improved cell phone coverage for AT&T users was in late October 2010, The Flat Hat reported in late September 2010.

The new antennae were delayed by four months following the initial September announcement. Contractual agreements further delayed the installation into 2011.

Faculty and students of the College of William and Mary’s English department will soon migrate back to their original home on campus, now gutted for repairs.

After an injection of last-minute funding from the Virginia General Assembly; St. George Tucker Hall renovations will resume this academic year, bringing the building up to current regulatory standards. After the renovations are complete, the displaced English department will move back into the Old Library in the spring of 2013.

Vice President of the Office of Administration Anna B. Martin discussed the logistics of the renovations.

“Our budget is $12.1 million from the state of Virginia. The building hasn’t been renovated since the 1980s and needed to be redone,” Martin said.

College President Taylor Reveley described the nature of the renovations.

“The building will be renovated to meet current regulatory requirements, especially for fire suppression and disability access. Its systems (for instance, heating and cooling) will be completely overhauled,” Reveley said. “Cutting-edge technology will be installed in the classrooms, and they will be reconfigured in ways more suitable for the current era.”

Reveley also mentioned the advantages the College community will see from these long-awaited renovations.

“A building at the heart of the campus will be totally reinvigorated, to the great benefit of the campus community,” he said. “Take a look at Small Hall for a recent example of what total reinvigoration can do for one of our important but elderly campus facilities.”

Professor Susan Donaldson, chair of the English department, is very excited about the department’s move back into Tucker.

“We have been waiting for this for a long time. It’s been very hard to move over 50 professors and their books .… We’re all looking forward to move back into a building designed specifically for the English department,” Donaldson said.

Donaldson described some of the systemic improvements of Tucker Hall that the English students and professors will see from the renovations.

“There will be more classroom space for [the English department.] It has been very hard to schedule classes without the benefit of Tucker Hall’s classrooms,” Donaldson said.

Members of the College community—faculty and students alike — appear to be very pleased about the upgrades scheduled for Tucker Hall after two years of inactivity.

“It’s always great to make new, creative use of an old, familiar place on campus,” Reveley said.

Donaldson commented on the importance to the English department moving back into their home.

“It’ll help solidify our sense of community again,” Donaldson said.

While global financial markets remain in turmoil, the College of William and Mary has something less volatile: its endowment fund. The 2011 President’s Report, released earlier this month, details fund growth, increased giving and falling state funding.

The report estimated that the William and Mary Investment Trust grew 15.8 percent, or $85.1 million, in the past fiscal year.

“It has never been more important for the College to grow its endowment,” College President Taylor Reveley said in a statement. “This requires wise management of our existing assets and a robust effort to add to them via new endowment gifts. We are making serious progress in both areas. Since [the end of Fiscal Year 2011 on June 30], there has been a good bit of turbulence in the market, and it’s unclear where the economy is headed, both nationally and internationally.”

The report estimates the worth of the WAMIT and related funds to be $624.7 million. Fiscal Year 2011 was the first in which the fund exceeded its value since 2008; the market meltdown damaged the fund and caused it to lose $85.2 million in the subsequent fiscal year.

The report also detailed gifts from nearly 30,000 donors to the College for the past fiscal year that totaled $41.1 million.

Despite this endowment growth, the endowment remains small compared to those of many elite American universities, especially private schools.

The endowment fund of Northwestern University totals $6 billion, Brown University totals $2.5 billion, Georgetown University totals over $1 billion and Duke University has $5.7 billion.

The College’s six-year fiscal plan, proposed in July and adopted in September by the Board of Visitors, takes this and other concerns into account.

“The plan acknowledges that the Commonwealth will continue to play an important role in the College’s future, providing both operating and facilities support,” Vice President of Finance Sam Jones ’75 MBA ’80 said in a letter to the public. “However, we do not expect that the state will restore those funds lost since 2008.

Competing pressures for resources, and a state revenue base that is driven solely by economic factors, will limit the dollars available to higher education.”

The report specified that the College takes in $289.9 million in operating revenue and spends $277.5 million in operating expense. State funds currently support 14.8 percent of the operating revenue, which is expected to fall to 12.8 percent for Fiscal Year 2012.

The decrease in state funds would increase the emphasis on both in-state and out-of-state student tuition and fees as a source of compensating revenue.

Coupled with an explicit promise to retain 65 percent of the student population as in-state students, this is likely to increase tuition rates in the College’s future.

“We would all like a larger endowment as a cushion against short-term cuts, but more importantly, as one way to move the College forward,” Jones said in a statement. “While on a per student basis we compare favorably to other public institutions, we compete against private institutions that to date have raised more money and have larger endowments. Generally, public institutions came late to the fundraising game since the state historically was seen as the primary funding vehicle. When states struggle to find the money to move institutions forward, private dollars become even more critical.”

The total assets of the College’s trusts now exceed $534 million, with $33 million in outstanding liabilities. Net assets for the 2011 Fiscal Year totaled $501 million, an increase of $63 million from Fiscal Year 2010.

The College’s assets are expected to continue to grow, and stabilize as global markets improve.

Instead of their typical diet of Lean Cuisine meals and salads, members of the Office of Community Engagement ate cheese sandwiches and canned peaches this week.

In order to gain a better understanding of hunger in Williamsburg, these individuals ate only from the list of foods Friends in Service to Him, or FISH, a local non-profit food and clothing bank, provides to residents in need from Nov. 14 to 18.

In addition, Cathey Sudowski, a member of the FISH board of directors, spoke Wednesday about FISH’s endeavors to address the realities of hunger and poverty throughout the Williamsburg community.

“We had a 60 percent increase in new clients to FISH this August compared to last August because people moved to Williamsburg looking for jobs in the hospitality industry but there just weren’t any left,” Sudowski said.

Advisor for Campus Kitchens Chelsea Estanoca, one of the participants in the weeklong altered-lunch endeavor, lamented that hunger affects 21 percent of the Williamsburg population — larger than in Virginia as a whole.

“I think students should care about this issue because one of the underlying factors is that it’s so much more expensive to eat and live in Williamsburg,” Estanoca said. “These realities affect them as well — whether living on or off campus.”

Estanoca relayed that the average cost of a meal in Williamsburg is about $3.30 whereas in the state of Virginia the average cost is approximately $2.80. Coordinator for Student and Community Engagement Elizabeth Miller, another participant in the activity, discussed the realities of these higher expenses.

“What I found so surprising is this trade-off happens where these individuals have such limited funds to pay for medical bills, housing bills and for their children’s health, and somehow food becomes negotiable,” Miller said.

Associate Director of the Office of Community Engagement and Scholarship Melody Porter commented that her experiences with these limited lunches brought attention to the families in particular.

“Though we’ve been dividing the food equally, I know that if I had kids I would want to give them more, so that’s even less for the parents than the already small portion,” Porter said.

As she experienced the meals eaten by many Williamsburg residents, Estanoca thought about the children affected by these circumstances.

“If it’s hard for us to concentrate I can only imagine what it’s like for kids in school who maybe aren’t getting this nutrition at home to try to learn,” Estanoca said.

In order to ease these hardships within the community, organizations like United Way refer individuals to food banks like Operation Hope, Grove Christian Outreach and FISH. According to Joyce O’Brien, United Way Director of Planning for the Greater Williamsburg area, United Way referred about 350 local residents to food banks every month in 2003.

“Though we receive referrals from churches and schools, it’s nice that the majority come from United Way as far as looking at the bigger picture because they have access to so many more resources that just FISH,” Sudowski said.

Despite FISH’s impact — spending over $49,000 on food and $33,000 on toiletries and other items in the past year — Sudowski emphasized the continual need for volunteers and aid to recognize and combat hunger throughout the Williamsburg community and beyond.

“I hope that I have made clear that there are bigger goals than those that our small organization can accomplish,” Sudowski said. “We’re just a band-aid.”

The Student Assembly held its second-to-last meeting of the semester Tuesday and discussed new acts submitted by Senator Grace Colby ’13 and Senate Chair Noah Kim ’13.

Colby introduced the Tables, Chairs, and Van Training Act, which will allow the SA to continue providing supplies to student events. The Finance Committee will review the bill.

“We funded tables and chairs for student events in the past, as well as van training,” Colby said. “I would like to continue funding these for student purposes.”

Kim introduced the New Student Organization Outreach Act.

This bill would repeal a previous act requiring student organizations that received more than 25 percent of the SA budget to appoint a non-voting member of the SA to their boards. This policy applies only to AMP.
“The reasoning for the [original act] was to ensure communication and oversight with student groups that receive that large of a proportion of [SA funds],” Kim said.

The proposed bill would instead require these student organizations to send a report of revenue and spending twice a year to the Finance Committee.

The SA also reviewed the Fall 2011 Campus Sustainability Grant Act. The Campus Sustainability Act would allocate funds for T-shirts sporting a student’s original design.

The profits from these shirts would go to the Campus Community on Sustainability Green Fund. The Outreach, Public Affairs, Finance and Student Life Committees will review the bill.

The SA will delay voting on the HPV Subsidization Act until next semester. The HPV Subsidization Act allocated $9,000 to subsidize 200 doses of HPV vaccines for College students.

“Kendall and I want to see this done right and want to see [that] the education awareness campaign associated with this [has] the students attention that will come with the new semester and not during final exams,” Kim said.

Lastly, Kim announced that the new executive committee established by the Checks and Balances Act held its first meeting Monday.

These meetings remain open to the public and regular meeting times are still being formed.

At the Center for Archaeological Research building, there is a large table strewn with diagrams carefully sketched onto a large sheet of graph paper, books of historical records marked on certain key pages and maps littered with intricate boundary lines and markings.

William and Mary Center for Archeological Research director Joe Jones explains the most recent find by the group — a well that dates back to the Civil War.

The archaeologists found the well while conducting research on land at the College of William and Mary near the Brafferton kitchen where new utility lines are going to be installed. Their goal was to discover if anything of archaeological significance existed in the area before it was damaged by the construction.

“We don’t have any reason to dig unless somebody’s getting ready to do something like this,” Jones said.

Jones is concerned with professional ethics in archaeology. He believes that nobody should disturb the resources in the ground unless there is a well-defined goal at hand.

“[You] only dig what you have to to answer the immediate question. We’re trying to strike that balance,” Jones said. “The archaeological community is going to say, ‘don’t dig it up unless you have a real good reason for doing it.’”

Jones pulled out one of the maps that has certain areas of campus marked in red. These are areas that could have historical significance and that could be disturbed by construction.

“Facilities Management was able to avoid some of these areas,” Jones said. “[The area where the well was discovered was] too big to avoid.”

And so the WMCAR archaeologists had a reason to excavate the area before the construction began, and discovered the well in the process. Jones believes it dates back to the Civil War because it is lined with reused materials that came from other sources. Remains of a wall were found near the well, and Jones believes that the Civil War troops occupying the College may have destroyed the wall and other structures to get building materials for new projects. A well would have been particularly important because of the enormous demands for water at the time.

“Odds are that there are other wells from that occupation on campus that haven’t been discovered yet,” Jones said.

Even the implications of this discovery are not yet definitively clear to the researchers. A large portion of the work involved in such a find takes place in the lab when archaeologists analyze and catalog artifacts.

“Excavating a well is a very complicated process … [Once removed, artifacts] begin to basically immediately fall apart,” anthropology professor Marley Brown said. “In terms of what I know that’s been found on campus … this might be the most exciting.”

Jones believes that the discovery of the well could lead to critical subsequent discoveries about the College during the Civil War. One of the main reasons for this is that archaeologists will know that anything found in the well came from the same time period.

“It can provide a true time capsule,” Jones said. “You probably really could learn interesting things about the daily routines of these Civil War soldiers.”