Staff Writer | Gabriella Mateo
As of Thursday, Nov. 21, the FIU Board of Trustees voted to approve the master plan until 2035 with the university’s third aquatic center to be located at Site 11, just outside the Stocker AstroScience Center – despite the fact that the Faculty Senate voted unanimously against this location.
“The fight is lost,” said Dr. James Webb, the Observatory’s director and renowned astrophysicist.
A petition to stop the construction near the observatory was initiated by Webb and spread by the Society of Physics Students and the Astronomy Club on social media.
The petition, Save Our Observatory: No to Site 11 Aquatic Center, was posted by SPS on Nov. 15 in a final attempt to save South Florida’s only research-grade telescope that places FIU as a “flagship student observatory,” according to Webb.
Webb shared concerns that the light pollution from the pool and the thermal currents emitting from the chlorine water would obscure the sensitive optical equipment of the Astro Tower. Despite this, the Board of Trustees chose Site 11, the most expensive option.
According to Webb, they “wish to have the aesthetics of a central pool, similar to ones in UM and TampaU.”
Sites 7 and 24 were rejected despite no direct effect on academic programs and only removing space from parking lots.
The Site 11 approval was for a master plan until 2035, granting the Observatory a few more years of operation.
The building has been a center of education for more than 500 undergraduate students per semester along with being a place to gather and watch the most recent solar eclipse, have stargazing nights and create a welcoming community.
The observatory has served 2,473 FIU undergraduate students over the past three years and has held 319 events since 2023.
Over 16,312 guests have visited star parties and tours in the decade of service from the beloved Stocker AstroScience Center- including its Saturday night live events where students can view celestial objects such as Saturn, Jupiter, the Moon, Orion’s nebula and more.
The center has been featured in 8 peer-reviewed scientific papers in major journals and recognized by astrophysicist Dr. Claudia Raiteri, an author of 454 scientific publications.
“Let’s concentrate on the positive, there is enough negativity in this universe,” said Webb in a final statement about the loss.
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