The University of Maryland Golf Course will not be redeveloped into an “academic village” after developer Brian Gibbons wrote a letter to university President Wallace Loh saying his firm has no plans to present proposals.
GOLF COURSE UPDATE
Last week, development firm Greenberg Gibbons scrapped plans to submit a proposal that called for the redevelopment of the university golf course. And though the golf course is safe for now, the Maryland Golf Course Coalition is sticking around just in case.
“We’re not going away,” said coalition chairman Norm Starkey.
The group will focus on strengthening its ties to the community and soliciting ideas to improve the golf course. And, Starkey said, members want to prepare for any future redevelopment proposals.
“I don’t view this as a final chapter,” Starkey said about proposed redevelopment. “If that doesn’t happen that’s good. But if it does happen, we need to be prepared.”
DOTS COSTUME CONTEST
Sights scarier than a DOTS truck patrolling for parking violations meandered through the Regents Drive Garage yesterday, when the Department of Transportation Services hosted a “Ghosts in the Garage” Halloween costume contest for staff and students.
The contest lasted from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., and anyone who entered the competition from 1 to 2 p.m. received three free parking codes, valid for any metered spaces on the campus.
Participants also had the chance to win free parking in Union Lane Garage for the rest of the semester, or the addition of Union Lane parking to their preexisting permit for the rest of the academic year. Costume contest winners will be announced Tuesday.
Following the DOTS costume contest at 4 p.m., bikeUMD hosted its own costume contest outside the Campus Bike Shop in Cole Field House before departing from Cole for its monthly bike ride at 4:30 p.m. The cyclist with the best costume will win a GoPro video camera.
ARCHIVES EXHIBIT
A new university digital archive will give the public access to manuscripts of prominent English writers, including Mary Shelley and William Godwin.
The Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities launched the Shelley-Godwin Archive to make “fully transcribed and encoded” manuscripts of works, such as Shelley’s Frankenstein available for examination online.
“The archive illuminates complexities in Frankenstein with regard to gender and the digitization makes this information visible and accessible to a wide range of scholars and interested people,” Bonnie Thornton Dill, arts and humanities college dean, said in a statement.
HUMAN POWERED HELICOPTER
University students recently beat the world record for duration of a human-powered helicopter flight by 11 seconds, according to a press release.
“Team Gamera” students set the unofficial record of 97 seconds — beating the Canadian Aerovelo Team’s record of 86 seconds — as part of the American Helicopter Society’s Igor I. Sikorsky Human Powered Helicopter Competition.
“Reaching this new unofficial flight duration record is a testament to the fearlessness of our engineering students,” said Darryll Pines, engineering school dean, in a press release. “They continue to push the extremes of what is considered possible for human powered helicopter flight.”
The record will likely become an official U.S. and world record after the National Aeronautic Association and the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale review it, according to a release.
