You folks may or may not care, but we here at the Campus Times have been complaining for years that the University of La Verne could put a lot more effort into fundraising than it traditionally has.

Well, President Morgan and company must have felt our negative vibes, because at January’s President’s Dinner Gala, Morgan unveiled the sparkling new, $42 million “Building on Excellence” Campaign. Yes, children, that’s 42 and six zeros.

Not impressed? Consider the fact that the campaign had already raised in excess of $27 million in the two-and-a-half year “quiet” phase prior to this big announcement, meaning the campaign has already passed the halfway mark.

Now that you’re paying attention, you’re probably asking what this obscenely large quantity of money is going to go toward. Well, that’s where things get a bit murky. The official press release proclaimed that the campaign will help “enhance the campus by updating facilities and infrastructure” and “furnish the tools needed to prepare La Verne graduates for future challenges,” among other things.

Suffice to say, those goals are about as specific as golfing in a thunderstorm is safe. Therefore, in the absence of any publicly stated concrete objectives, we at the Campus Times figured it was our sacred duty to come up with some suggested applications for the $21 million not destined for the Sara & Michael Abraham Campus Center. Here, in no particular order, are our top picks:

• Renovate Founders Hall. This should be a no brainer, but the actions (or lack thereof) on the part of the administration seem to suggest otherwise. While the auditorium alone has its own laundry list of issues (worn-out seats, no air-conditioning, electrical gremlins galore, etc.), both it and the main portion of the building are in desperate need of at least a couple million for facelifts.

• Fix the drainage around the ACB. Okay, so this one might sound a bit selfish, but think about it: We all know that it actually does rain in Southern California, and outsiders got all the proof they needed earlier this week. You’d think that out of all the money they spent to turn this retired fruit-packing house into the techno-fortified complex it is today, the powers that were would have budgeted a few clams for an adequate drainage system. Well, they didn’t, but the good news is it’s not too late to fix that.

• Build a parking structure. Yes, we’re aware that there’s at least one of those on the drawing board for the Campus Master Plan (slated to be built sometime between 2013 and 2015), but with enrollment numbers climbing steadily, and the Metro Gold Line extension not expected to reach La Verne until around 2014 at the earliest, investing in a parking structure sooner rather than later would be a very sound investment.

• Install air-conditioning in Brandt and Stu-Han. Even though on-campus housing isn’t available during the summer, the weeks leading up to and immediately following summer are usually just as hot, if not hotter. And just because Stu-Han, the University’s lone single sex dorm, is scheduled to be razed by 2009 to make way for a parking lot shouldn’t preclude the administration from coughing up a few thousand smackers to install some reasonably priced window-mount A/C units in the meantime.

All of these proposals are relatively affordable, badly needed and, best of all, would make perfect sense, even to non-Leopards. While we will probably like many of the things the ULV braintrust has planned, we just want to make sure that the money that could be used for the projects that are truly the most important ones—the ones that will have huge effects on our daily lives—doesn’t get blown on a couple of “So what?” white elephants.

The ball is in your court, President Morgan.