The Faculty Senate has jumped into the debate over putting a McDonald’s in the Hub.

Dr. Phil Van De Voorde, faculty senator for the Parks Library, and Tyler Walters, university archivist at the library, addressed a meeting of the executive board of the Faculty Senate yesterday to discuss questions surrounding the effects a McDonald’s in the Hub may have on the library.

Working on the assumption that the placement of a McDonald’s at the Hub is already a “done deal,” Van De Voorde suggested in a written proposal to the executive board that the University negotiate with McDonald’s to “fund the installation of an advanced filter system on the library’s air intake and the Hub exhaust which will greatly decrease the probability of harmful substances causing deterioration to the Library materials.”

Walters said cooked food is more damaging to library materials than vending machine foods.

“With hot greasy fries it will be a lot worse,” he said. “It will attract insects and many of these insects eat paper.”

Van De Voorde and Walters proposed that the university consider providing more funds for monitoring materials entering the library and supplementing janitorial services to handle the increased inflow of food and food wrappers into it.

Walters suggested that the latter option would be more appropriate to avoid being intrusive to people’s privacy.

“We want the library to be a welcome place, where people can come and enjoy their time there,” he said.

Veronica Dark, faculty senator for LAS, made a motion to express the executive board’s concerns about the new McDonald’s at a forum, “McDonald’s in the Hub”, which will be held at noon today in the Maintenance Shop, saying “the executive board feels there are legitimate issues involving contamination of library material and consequences to academic atmosphere that need to be addressed.”

“If you have massive deterioration of materials 40, 50 or 60 years from now, generations that follow us will curse us for not taking a stronger stand,” Van De Voorde said.