When East Lansing resident Christine Piotter heard about the Council of Graduate Students’ first annual Get Chitt Done 5-km race, she was intrigued to enter based on the event’s name alone.
Piotter was the first female finisher of the about 90 students and community members who ran the 3.3-mile Get Chitt Done Run/Walk across campus Sunday morning, sponsored by the Council of Graduate Students, or COGS, to raise awareness of the effort to renovate Chittenden Hall to make the building a graduate resource center.
She said she knew little of the effort to renovate Chittenden Hall prior to the race, but she now supports the cause.
“We need to keep old buildings,” she said. “That’s what makes MSU, MSU.”
COGS Vice President for External Affairs LeighAnn Jordan said the run, which was slightly longer than a normal 5-km to include a route around Chittenden Hall, served as an awareness event for renovation efforts but would not raise any funds toward the cause this year.
All proceeds went toward race supplies and Chittenden T-shirts, she said.
Necessary funding to renovate the vacant historic building still is in the university’s capital outlay request. And although MSU administrators have been supportive of the renovation, finding the funding is the main concern, COGS President Stefan Fletcher said.
In a previous interview, university engineer Bob Nestle estimated renovation costs would be $5.6 million, but said he does not expect the funds to be granted from the state in the near future.
Fletcher said he is cautiously optimistic the request will be honored, but the question is how long it will take.
Jordan said as the race expands in future years, entry fees will increase to help fundraising for the building’s renovation.
“In the future, we hope to have more of the graduate school and faculty and professors be a part of it and have it be an entire MSU community event,” she said.
For kinesiology freshman Elena Mikelonis, who also hadn’t heard of the potential Chittenden renovations before the event, crossing the finish line was a victory all its own.
After years of suffering from painful shin splints, Mikelonis finally began running again during winter break and completed her first 5-km run in two years Sunday.
“The fact that I could do three miles again was great,” she said.
Piotter called the race a “win-win situation” for both the community and COGS, saying as an East Lansing resident, she isn’t as familiar with campus events as students are, and events like the Get Chitt Done run are a good way to raise awareness for student concerns.
She said she plans to tell her friends about the Chittenden Hall renovation effort.
Fletcher said the run helped inform people outside of MSU’s internal student population, such as Piotter, and is another strategy for COGS outreach in East Lansing.
“The more attention we can have is better,” Fletcher said. “We can’t afford to let it slip off the radar.”
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