USF St. Petersburg department builds new home
BY AMANDA SMITH
STAFF WRITER
Harriett Fletcher has always wanted a place to call home. Thanks to Habitat for Humanity and the USF St. Petersburg community, she will finally get her wish.
“For so long, I’d been a part of a government-assisted housing program where I had to move every six months,” said Fletcher, who has been the staff assistant for the College of Arts and Sciences for two years. “My kids never had a place they knew as home.”
Fletcher said when she had endured all she could with the housing program, she and her two sons, ages 19 and 12, moved in with her mother as a last resort. 
An old plague hits USF St. Petersburg
BY BEN FRY
STAFF WRITER
A serious condition is making its way around college campuses. Students come down with this condition at the end of every semester, but it is especially common during the spring semester. It is contagious, and it can be devastating. And there is a name for it: senioritis.
And through a [very unscientific] investigation, this condition has been discovered at USF St. Petersburg.
According to the numerous articles written on senioritis, symptoms include procrastination, apathy toward schoolwork, tendency to be truant, faking illness to avoid classes or homework, cognitive impairments and changes in sleeping patterns.
New building, new possibilities
BY GALINA TISHCHENKO
STAFF WRITER
The groundbreaking ceremony for a new classroom building on campus will take place on May 2. The new facility promises more space and more research opportunities to USF St. Petersburg’s College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Marine Science.
Jim Grant, director of facilities, planning and construction, said the new building will occupy parking lot number two, which is commonly referred to as the Davis parking lot. Once completed, the 34,000 square feet building will stand two stories tall. The first floor will have a total of eight general classrooms, two of which will be large enough for 58 students and six with the sitting capacity of 48 students. The second floor will accommodate four instructional labs and eight research labs. The new facility will be split between the two colleges.
The expected completion date of the project is August 2009, Grant said. The construction site will be set up at the end of June this year, so the parking lot will stay open until the end of the current semester.
RHO students decide whether to stay or go
BY AMY BEEMAN
STAFF WRITER
After two years of housing students, USF St. Petersburg’s Residence Hall One again seeks to fill its 348 rooms. While new students and their parents are getting tours of the building, some students who have called the residence hall home are leaving.
Of the 130 first-year students who moved into the hall in fall 2008, about 80 are returning, Kent Kelso, regional vice chancellor of academic affairs, said.
“We’re still a little over 100 [students] short of where we need to be to be full,” Kelso said.
