The Student Government Association at the Altamonte Springs Campus has started a petition for the addition of a second building to help with the overcrowding of the campus.
Seminole State College opened the Altamonte campus in January 2008 and “basically opened at near capacity,” said Samantha Ciresi, Altamonte Springs Campus SGA president.
The campus has “grown to become the second-largest campus hosting 14.85% of the student population,” she said, and the campus serves one of the largest population areas of Central Florida, which is noted on the petition.
Seminole State College opened the H building last year to help alleviate the burden, but Ciresi said “there’s only two classrooms and 20 faculty offices, and it’s meant for online students so it doesn’t really help the problem.”
The problem is so bad, she said, that there is a lack of parking during peak hours of the day. Students have resorted to parking on a grass lot adjacent to the main building that would be the site of the building needed in the petition.
The cost of construction of a new building is not something SSC would be able to handle alone as a “mixed state funded institution,” according to Hector Dietsch, facilities manager for Seminole State College.
“Last year for the Altamonte campus we put in a request for a second building and the total amount was $48.5 million,” Dietsch said.
The college is not competing for funds but “just presenting” the project, he said, and the school is part of a system of colleges across Florida in need of money for capital improvement plans.
Ciresi said she and the SGA at the Altamonte Campus “have been trying for years to be on the college priority list” in order to get a second building.
The problem seems not to be an absence from the “college priority list” but a lack of funds, she said.
