Wolf Law Building: History
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Funding
CU created a new model of student funding for capital construction. The Wolf Law Building is the first of its kind because it essentially creates a new model of financing—students taxing themselves to build a new law school.
The Law School was subject to losing accreditation by its accrediting agency for inadequate facilities after seven years of efforts produced no results. The need for action was urgent. However, because of the state’s financial and political inability to follow through on promised funding, the effort to construct a sorely needed new building was stalled in the planning process. This led the school to pursue a new model of student and private funding.
Law students helped lobby the Colorado General Assembly successfully in 2004 to enact a bill enabling the University of Colorado to become an “enterprise” so that tuition could be increased to fill gaps left with state budget cuts and bonds could be sold for academic buildings.
- The Wolf Law Building cost $46.3 million, 60% being paid for by students. No other known major building on the Boulder campus or at any other university has been built with this level of student support.
- In 1997, Colorado Law students voted to pay $1,000 per year additional tuition to be dedicated to paying for a new building, an income stream of $6 million.
- In 2003, Colorado Law students successfully worked with the student government in creating a $400-per-year fee on all 29,000 CU-Boulder students for 20 years to replace the $21 million that the legislature rescinded in the wake of Colorado’s fiscal crisis.
- The fee will provide a total of $100 million for capital construction on the Boulder campus and construction of the Law School, ATLAS building, an addition to the Business School, a new Fine Arts Building and information technology infrastructure throughout the campus.
- The Law School received nearly $18 million in private gifts, most notably was a $3 million donation from the Wolf family.
- Also, 20% of the student fee will go toward financial aid to help students who would have a hard time affording increased fees. And 1% of the construction funds will go toward environmentally friendly features, such as the use of renewable energy in the buildings.
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