While students’ fees have been increased to fund a number of SIUC improvements, the University still cannot find the money to renovate the Christian H. Moe Laboratory Theater.

SIUC administration needs to help the Theater Department in its renovation pursuit in the form of cold, hard cash instead of valueless rhetoric.

When a supposed institution of higher learning allows its valuable educational tools to suffer from decades of wear and tear, ultimately students will suffer. And for 30 years, SIUC’s theater students have been saddled with such a tool the damaged and outdated laboratory theater.

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Students use the laboratory theater as a classroom on a daily basis and as a forum for experimental plays. The theater’s lighting and sound equipment is supposed to provide students with hands-on technical training.

But when students and instructors are forced to use a poor, unsafe stage floor as well as lighting and sound equipment from the 1960s how can they benefit from this theater?

And how can any audience appreciate Theater Department offerings in a venue with seats and carpeting that are decades old?

The answers? It would be difficult for these groups to fully appreciate the theater in its present condition. For example, theater student Aaron Hanna said a home stereo serves as the theater’s sound equipment. This is pitiful.

If these concepts still are difficult to understand, consider this:The theater has not undergone any renovation since it opened in 1966. Any equipment that it features may be older than most of the theater students who use it.

Sarah Blackstone, Theater Department chairwoman, said the theater needs an exhaustive makeover. New risers and chairs, a floor and sound and lighting systems would cost the Theater Department $100,000. Even with after all of the hard work the department has done to raise money for the renovation, it still lacks $70,000.

When the DE first reported this dilemma earlier this year, itsupported the idea of an Undergraduate Student Government-proposed fee increase. If that had happened, we would have hoped that the University would join the effort to help the suffering department. But instead of any of that happening, University officials only said they would help after it saw what the department could raise on its own.

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Well now is a good time to see that idea through. SIUC recently has enjoyed a 5-percent increase in students’ tuition and fee charges and should use some of that extra money to renovate the Laboratory Theater.

That theater provides training for the theater students who offer the SIUC community and local community the opportunity to enjoy a number of performances throughout the year. The Theater Department deserves this help.