Earlier this week, workers began removing the brown paneling from the walls of the hallways on the second floor of the Kent Student Center. This renovation is part of a project designed to refresh the look and feel of spaces within the Student Center.
As the panels were removed and the cinderblock walls underneath were revealed, Kent State students, staffers and faculty, including Lamar Hylton, senior vice president for student affairs, took the opportuntity to write messages on the exposed blocks.
No one knows when these blocks will next be exposed, possibly in some future renovation, but when they are, they will reveal messages of inspiration, delivered from Flashes of the past to Flashes in the future.
Jay Graham, executive director facilities, planning and design, university architect, said buildings like the Kent Student Center are designed to have a useful lifespan of 50+ years. Regular maintenance and major renovations can extend that lifespan to more than 100 years, which means that the messages left this week could possibly be seen by future Flashes as distant as the Kent State freshman class of 2076!