Veterans Memorial Taskforce
February 10th, 2016
SURC 236 6:00pm
Call to Order
Hauke calls the meeting to order at 6:00pm.
Present
 Co-Chair: Rene Mahnke, VP for Student Life and Facilities
 Co-Chair: Hauke Harfst, VP for Academic Affairs
 Army ROTC: Christina Black
 Alumni Association: Robert Ford, Director, Alumni and Constituent Relations
 CWU Veterans Center: Ruben Cardenas, Interim Director.
 Art Representative: Gregg Schlanger, Chair, Art Department
 Facilities: William Yarwood, Director, Facilities Planning & Construction Services
 KVA: Linda Huber
 CWU Veteran Student: David Sturgell
 Ellensburg Veteran: Jack Frost
 ASCWU Student Government: Brittany Kinsella, VP for Clubs and Organizations, Nina
Caldwell, VP for Legislative Affairs
Updates
Hauke Harfst: Last week I was in Olympia for Lobby day. On Saturday I was at the alumni board and
when I got on the topic of the veteran’s memorial they were asking how they could fund it. What they
would like to see is a website, progress, and a donation area on the website. I have gotten on a profile that
can accept the donations and now the task would be what to do for those who did donate? We are going to
get a website up to have our progress, minutes and everything else entailing this committee.
Gregg Schlanger: The standard would be to have pavers to have their names on it. And a location to have
a place to update it for those who have updated. There could be a number of ways but that is the easiest
way and most convenient way to go about it.
Funding
Jack Frost: For those that donate money by the pool we have pavers for those that we can put their
names on. We had it come up the other day, the way we have it now, the area is concrete and we are
looking at taking it out and placing the pavers in. it will also give others not in the community to have
loved ones names in this memorial.
Hauke Harfst: The alumni board was very glad to see this and were looking for ways they could get
involved so they would like to see a website to see our progress.
Jack Frost: The alumni association? Is that Bob?
Hauke Harfst: Yes, Bob Ford.
Ruben Cardenas: Recognizing donators at the ribbon cutting and having a social gathering on campus
afterwards.
Jack Frost: The only issue that I would have would that there would be individuals that might not be
included with the opening.
Hauke Harfst: That is what we did at the wildcat way opening, mentioning the donators.
Ruben Cardenas: We could give the individuals challenge coins.
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David Sturgell: people are usually very grateful for having something they can show in their office. Also
having the individuals breaking ground with a golden shovel, and we can have pictures taken of it and
those individuals can take that with them. We can also call on Publicity that can sign and mail out letters.
Design
William Yarwood: I would like to introduce Jyoti, she is an architect. She is involved with facilities and
planning for our campus. Next week we will be presenting the concept and the site to the building
committee. Looking for donations is also a good idea.
Jyoti Naik: Is the location fixed?
David Sturgell: It seems that it is fairly fixed according to the committee.
Hauke Harfst: I really like the idea of the crystal engraving and having pictures for those who donate.
Jack Frost: Would that then be only for the initial people that donate for the memorial?
Hauke Harfst: I think it will only be for the initial group of individuals that donate for it.
Jack Frost: What about those individuals that want to donate but cannot donate thousands of dollars?
Gregg Schlanger: There should be a maintenance budget for this.
David Sturgell: It is a high foot trafficking area and the pavers down there already are eroding.
Jack Frost: Those are cheap pavers. Those don’t stand up as well.
Gregg Schlanger: This is just an initial quick sketch to see where we are today. We will develop it better
and in more detail. It could be a new plaza and that could reduce the foot traffic in the area. For the price
of the paver, I think we can give something to the individuals that donate.
Gregg Schlanger: The engravings are amazingly inexpensive.
Hauke Harfst: Anything else on that? Bill?
William Yarwood: Anything that happens on the grounds must go through the committee that oversees
the masterplan. This was overseen by Ryan and John. There was a presentation on this committee that it is
definitely under way. There is a website on standing committees. It is an open meeting in barge 412 on
the 16th. This is on the agenda. They will be interested in on the location that we propose. It would be
really good to get that through this group for next week. There are some things that we need to check up
on. We don’t want to be putting this on top of something, we will check up on that and help you through
that process.
Hauke Harfst: The next big thing we need to talk about, I talked to Ruben about this. We need to know
where we will start.
Ruben Cardenas: It is also self-identifying. And 10% of veterans do not self-identify. And going back I
do not know how we would know of veterans going back. If we are going to include CWU KIA veterans
on the memorial. We don’t know how we will identify CWU veterans.
Jack Frost: CWU and Washington veterans?
Hauke Harfst: There will be both but have something showing CWU veterans on the memorial.
Jack Frost: A KIA list should be available for this. I don’t know if they will be able to filter by school.
Ruben Cardenas: I don’t know how to identify students. Alumni has no data on veterans.
Hauke Harfst: We went down to the alumni association and they do not track that information.
Ruben Cardenas: That is the issue trying to track down the veterans from CWU.
Jack Frost: At least the alumni can contact the previous students and contact the last students.
David Sturgell: We can crowd source this. We can use our history students and incentivize them to
search for names; we can pay a bounty for each verified name. We can work with other departments that
do research as well. That way we have an ongoing search for names. And we can also say that our
students are doing what they study. This is a school where our students are hands on. If we have some
funding, we have to make sure that we have a verification process. I am not comfortable to include a
monument that does not solely include CWU students.
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Gregg Schlanger: There are some other issues with the names. We need to have definite documentation
for fundraising. If it was presented as a statewide it might get more funding or only CWU inclusive. This
also could put an interest in CWU as a stopping location if we are more inclusive rather than having
central Alumni on there.
Jack Frost: A memorial in and of itself, some don’t have names on them. Some are statues or blank
stones. I think it should be a Central list though, not minimizing the rest of the state. The number of KIA
names, we can also expand it to KIA, POW, MIA. If we were doing a vote right now I would have to vote
for only Central names.
Hauke Harfst: That is something I was talking to Rene about. We were looking at other memorials. We
saw that some memorials utilized symbols to show the amount of individuals killed, a star to show that
this many individuals died.
Rene Mahnke: We could include that to have the state and to have something specialized for the Alumni.
Hauke Harfst: I would like to have something including the rest of the state.
Gregg Schlanger: What if one of the columns was dedicated to central, and one end highlights that.
Jack Frost: We would have to also include the amount of stones we are using. If you don’t have enough
names to fill three stones then… Obtaining KIA and MIA and POW names, that should be fairly doable.
David Sturgell: That definitely will be an ongoing process. We definitely will have enough names to
start. There is a remote possibility that there were CWU alumni’s that were involved with military
actions.
Jack Frost: There have been men since the first class. I don’t know if Doug Munro was involved with the
campus.
Rene Mahnke: We will ask the Alumni to see what they need to find the individuals to put on the list.
Gregg Schlanger: Going back to the site, this seemed to be the way to address the traffic issue.
Expanding the walk way and having a plaza. If we get the design for the stones, we can have them by
Memorial Day. They are going to have to do a lot of rock work so we can move the text design down to
about April so we will have time to think about it. I shared this with University collection committee so
they know that this is happening and they can be used as a resource. We should have more input from the
whole group. Listening to Mark talk, there will be other groups on campus that will agree and disagree
with the memorial.
Hauke Harfst: I talked to Mark about mass incarceration and the input that we get is good but including
too many groups in this, we will never get this done.
Gregg Schlanger: How can we at least include some of the groups, so we can please some input of the
groups. Having more information in the SURC for what we are doing. Maybe there might not be too
many other voices for it.
Website Creation
Hauke Harfst: On the website we will have a dropbox to have comments for the memorial.
Rene Mahnke: Should we have it on the CWU website or to have another website? We can easily do it
on the CWU website.
Gregg Schlanger: There are still decisions to be made on this…
Hauke Harfst: If you can get the price on the stones, we can get the board to talk about it and have what
we want to do with the amount.
Gregg Schlanger: I have been working on it for a week with the stones. It is more about the design and
the content.
David Sturgell: This in itself does not look bad, and names could be added later.
Gregg Schlanger: I took the flags out due to the space. I dropped the American flag in there due to the
removal of the Barge Hall flag.
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William Yarwood: That has changed. It sounds like that the flag on top of Barge is going to stay there.
Jack Frost: Don’t they use it once a month for the trustees?
William Yarwood: Yes, it has been there a long time.
Jack Frost: I would like to do the most we can to get names. The only issue with having the first and the
last names is making sure they are the first and last. I don’t think we should categorize the names due to
the availability of the names.
Hauke Harfst: I think getting those stones and getting stories on them would be a good place to start.
Jack Frost: And also what do you think about having the seals?
Gregg Schlanger: I was thinking about having a bronze seal between the benches for each of the
branches.
Jack Frost: What about the MART Marines? They didn’t get any of the recognition until not too long
ago.
Ruben Cardenas: If we do that we have to do the contractors too then.
Jack Frost: No, they got recompensed for it and are considered part of the military theatre.
Hauke Harfst: It is a thought but could be an issue.
David Sturgell: There might be a way to accommodate the other voices. There might be a place in the
Art Department to have rotating exhibits that could display these kinds of experiences. An exhibition
space. That could let these other voices be heard. This is a veteran’s memorial and we need to keep it at
that.
Jack Frost: And by that definition, that would mark the MART Marines off then.
David Sturgell: There are a lot of small cases like that were certain civilians have been recognized in
military theatres.
Jack Frost: What do we want to do today?
Hauke Harfst: To establish what we want to put on the memorial, in regards to the names. Now that I
know we have more time we can hash out our funding and other ideas we can include.
Gregg Schlanger: And the stories that I included were ones that were available to me. My thought still is
that we reach out to the state of Washington or to just the county for letters back home from veterans.
That would take some research.
Jack Frost: There is a voice we aren’t hearing, Dr. Brooks. He would be great to get something from
him.
Hauke Harfst: We could also reach out to other alumni’s through ROTC. Plenty of them have been
deployed and they have links there. We can pull stories from there too.
Gregg Schlanger: And the letters are from those sent home, making them fairly powerful. Also we could
get letters through the website and we won’t be able to publish them all we can do more for them.
Jack Frost: Are there any negative attitudes for this memorial or committee?
Hauke Harfst: I don’t think so. There might be but I don’t think they will vocalize themselves.
David Sturgell: I think we can take the idea from Maya Lin about the Vietnam memorial that does not
broadcast anything to the person but only visualize it to the people and have them bring their own
meaning.
Hauke Harfst: We talked about the names, funding, and website. Rene and I will get in touch with gold
star families and get letters.
Rene Mahnke: We will also go through archives. One more thing, are we sent in stone with how many
basalt pillars?
Jack Frost: I think I made that motion last month.
David Sturgell: Is there a significance to the number?
Gregg Schlanger: The number of different renditions I went through just became what felt right.
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Jack Frost: Was it because of the size of the area? That shape that style is what I wanted to do. I think we
should leave that aspect to the artist and architect. Do we want to make that an official motion?
Jack Frost motions to give Gregg Schlanger freedom of the design, to adjust the memorial as need in
the location designated by the committee. This design will be based off the original Spokane design
Gregg Schlanger proposed the previous year and will stay within the initial quoted price.
William Yarwood seconds.
Discussion:
Gregg Schlanger: The cost is included in delivery. We will have to do all other labor. I am hoping I will
have a concrete number by next week. I will work more details out about this.
Motion PASSED 5-0-1
William Yarwood: The way stuff gets approved on campus is through sites committee. They report to
the VP for operations. They will make a recommendation to the VP and it will go to the cabinet for
approval. That is what will happen for next week’s meeting so we need to just have a rough idea of the
location.
Adjourn
Jack Frost
David Sturgell
6-0-0
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