CON V ERGING CA MPUS & COMMU NIT Y
NORTHWEST MISSOURIAN
THURSDAY, APRIL 24, 2025
MARYVILLE, MISSOURI
NWMISSOURINEWS.COM
VOL. 113, NO. 16
@THEMISSOURIAN
Fraternity brother dies, memories shared by close friends ANNA BAILEY Asst. News Editor | @AmBailey16
AARON HARE PHOTO EDITOR
Northwest MEP Senior Supervisor Troy Brady points to different utilities that run through the tunnels running under Northwest’s campus.
Rumors about tunnels beneath NW put to rest HANNAH CLAYWELL Managing Editor | @Hannah_9504
W
hether it’s heating the sidewalks or a walkway between classes, many rumors float around Northwest about the tunnels under campus. A series of tunnels runs under N Northwest, mainly to provide heat and cooling tto the different buildings. MEP Senior Supervvisor Troy Brady works within the tunnels and provides tours when requested. p “We use our tunnels on this campus to convey our water, our gas, our electricity, our steam, our chilled w water, all of the utilities that we use to keep this place w rrunning on a day-to-day basis,” Brady said. The main walking tour of the tunnel goes from the John C. Redden Jr. Power Plant to Franken th Hall or the B.D. Owens Library — depending on H the end goal. A popular misconception on camth pus is the sidewalks are heated; this is not entirelyy p true. Some parts of the sidewalks will melt ice and tr ssnow during the winter, but Brady said the steam lines can’t keep all the heat inside the steam jackli eet, and the melting is just a side effect. A large part of the power plant was built in the late 1970s and early 80s. Northwest utilized wood la pellets from different storms and similar situap tions, and tree trimmers would bring byproducts ti tto the campus. Brady said eventually, vendors realized wood pellets had value as a renewable rea ssource, and Northwest had to move away from that woodstock. Now that part of the plant is deth ccommissioned, and other parts will be as well as Northwest decentralizes its plant. N “If you’re not aware of it, we’re actually decenttralizing — breaking this plant apart because it is more efficient to actually have smaller plants out m amongst the buildings,” Brady said. a To fund improvements, fee increases have been applied before. Facility Services has gone to stua
AN INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER SINCE 1914.
dent groups, including Student Senate, to discuss these fee increases. The current designated/general fee for undergraduate students is $131.90. “I understand the fact that things cost money, and you’re not oblivious to the fact that they cost money either,” Brady said. “But I think there is a stewardship that Northwest does a pretty decent job at not spending your money recklessly.” Brady said the natural gas fire boilers are used to push steam out to campus. Once in the tunnels, there are a series of pipes along one wall, one of which can climb over 300 degrees.
SEE TUNNELS | A4
Undergraduate students pay a designated fee of
$131.90
to Facility Services and other programs on campus as of the 2024-25 academic year.
ILLUSTRATIONS BY JULIANNA LAWRENCE DESIGN EDITOR
Northwest students, members of Sigma Tau Gamma-Theta Chapter and others, such as University President Lance Tatum, gathered 8 p.m. April 17 around the Memorial Bell Tower to honor former student Joe Miller. Miller, 19, died April 11 due to a brain tumor. Sophomore Parker Heller was a friend and brother to Miller in Sig Tau. He said his death was sudden. “It was really unexpected, because we were going to go see him Friday,” Heller said. “We found out he wasn’t doing the best…there was, I think, 20 of us, we were going to go see him, and then we get the call that morning that we can’t come see him because he’s gone.” Heller said he felt broken at that moment. Miller’s lifelong friend, freshman Avery Hanafan, said she found out Miller was not doing well April 9. She and Bryson Jensen, another of Miller’s longtime friends and his roommate, drove home from the University to see him that evening. “My mom had called me, and she had said that he (Miller) had gone into the ER Tuesday night, and that they found more masses on him, and that he had 10ish days, maybe,” Hanafan said. “It was in the brain, so kind of aggressive. You don’t ever really know what’s gonna happen.” Hanafan said they both had a chance to talk to Miller one last time before April 11. She said when she received the call that he had died, it felt like an ‘Is it real?’ situation. Hanafan said she and Miller knew each other their entire lives. Growing up, both of their dads were coaches at Lewis Central High School in Council Bluffs, Iowa. She said the two families would go on vacations together and hang out at basketball and football games. Hanafan said they felt like each other’s family. “(My) earliest memory would probably be…kindergarten, first grade, when we started going to the lake together,” Hanafan said. “Our families would take a week and we’d go to the lake, and you would always catch me and Joe (Miller) being down at the dock with each other, with our fishing poles away from everybody else.” Hanafan said Miller’s liver cancer was first discovered during his sophomore year of high school. She said she knew he had not been at school and assumed he was sick. Later, Miller texted her to inform her he was going into surgery. “We watched him go through 40-plus surgeries, a lot of rounds of chemo…he lost a lot of weight, and he lost his hair and everything,” Hanafan said. “Even through all of that, you still knew who Joe (Miller) was. He wasn’t a different kid. He wasn’t shameful of his sickness.” She said one memorable aspect of Miller was his mentality on life. Hanafan said he believed life is only a piece of time, while going up to Heaven is an eternity. During the on-campus memorial service, Sigma Tau Gamma-Theta Chapter President Quinn Palmer said Miller was not afraid of death.
SEE MEMORIAL | A4
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