A memorial is on its way to Central in honor of America’s veterans.

Central students have been pushing administration to begin work a memorial for veterans and progress is being made.

“I think it’s something that was overdue,” Rene Mahnke, vice president of student life and facilities said.  

According to Mahnke, the memorial is still in the conceptual phase. The next steps will be to figure out the location, come up with a design and begin fundraising.

However, before more progress is made, Mahnke believes that it’s of the utmost importance to get input from Central students.

During a debate at the Central Student Academic Senate, a student approached Mahnke with the idea of building a veteran’s memorial on Central’s campus.

Mahnke thought about what the student said and agreed that a memorial was a great idea.

The placement of the memorial is currently unknown, but two locations have become front runners.

The first possible location is on University Way, in front of McConnell Hall. This is the preferred location of the task force because of its visibility.  

The other possible location is the empty park between the Science Building and the SURC.

According to Mahnke, the benefit of this location is that no buildings can be built there, so nothing can take away from the memorial.

Though data is still being collected about what design will be used, it’s been decided that the memorial is going to be done in-house through the art department to allow for more input from students and save money.

The time frame for this memorial is “aggressive,” said Hauke Harfst, vice president for Academic Affairs. The plan has been in place since last spring.

“Five of the current ASCWU members are graduating, so next year’s board may have a completely different agenda,” Harfst said.

It’s Harfst’s hope that ground is broken for the memorial by the end of the school year, but if that’s not possible, he wants to have the project far enough along that whoever ends up in office next year has to follow through.

Mahnke said that it doesn’t matter if you have veterans in your family or not, veterans and ROTC students are on campus everywhere.

It’s important to the task force that regardless of a person’s connection to the military, that they feel something when they see this memorial.

“We could quickly throw up a statue of a rifle and a boot with a helmet on top and say, ‘thank you’ to our veterans quickly but it won’t mean anything,” Harfst said.