Plugged in: A Fix My Campus project will bring electricity to a shared Krzyzewskiville tent

Electricity is coming to Krzyzewskiville after the Duke Student Government Senate approved a Fix My Campus plan to bring a generator to tenters. 

In a short session on Wednesday night, the DSG Senate unanimously passed a budgetary statute to allocate $1,964 to Fix My Campus—a student-run group that addresses student issues on campus—to continue its work through the Spring semester. The funds will enable the group to set up a new shared tent space in K-Ville, with electricity available to tenters. 

The new tent, which Fix My Campus estimated will cost $1,950.56, is not a replacement for the $3,200 "common room" tent approved by the Senate in December 2018. That "common room" tent will replace a previous version of the common room tent that was destroyed in last year's walk-up line for the North Carolina game last year. This shared tent will be in addition to the common room.

The DSG funding covers a 10-by-20-feet canopy tent, which will include tables, chairs and a generator that will power up to 40 electronic devices. The tent itself costs $500 and has a warranty for five years.

Junior Vinit Parekh represented Fix My Campus in front of the Senate and discussed the group's funding needs. 

Parekh said the new tent would have a "library setting" compared to the communal purpose of the existing common room tent in K-Ville. He also suggested that Fix My Campus may work to expand electricity to other areas of K-Ville if the new tent is successful. 

The Senate also included funding for Fix My Campus to organize donations of excess food on campus to Urban Ministries of Durham, a local nonprofit. Parekh said that the $1,000 allocated by the Senate would go toward food transportation costs.

The legislation requires that the Senate include any future funding for Fix My Campus in the DSG annual budget. President Pro Tempore Avery Boltwood, a junior, said Fix My Campus has operated without a formal budget for the past two years and was funded by an original lump sum of $10,000.