Iowa State University president, Steven Leath, gave the Board of Regents an update on the May 30th fire at Sweeney Hall during the board’s meeting Wednesday. “Cleanup continues there, no one was injured but the fire did cause a fair bit of damage — especially smoke and water damage,” according to Leath. “Structurally the building is okay, but we’ve had to move summer classes out of the building.”
He says they are doing what they can to get the building back open for fall classes. “Sweeney houses our highly acclaimed chemical and biological engineering department. One of our concerns is they have a lot of very expensive equipment in there that may need to be replaced. We’ll keep you updated on that, that is going to be a challenge for us,” Leath says. He says they still don’t know the exact cause of the fire.
Leath also talked with the board about the task force that’s trying decide the future of the Veishea celebration. Leath canceled this year’s Veishea April 10th after violence broke out. “Our task force has met numerous time, had a number of public forums. a lot of input from a lot of people with different perspectives. We’re getting a lot of ideas about what we should do with Veishea,” Leath says.
He says the task force has four more meetings before sending him a report. “Once I get their recommendations I’ll meet with the Mayor, police, people on campus, off campus, I’ll talk to regent’s leadership and we’ll make some decision as to how we go forward with Veishea in the future,” Leath says.