To Data Center or Not to Data Center? That is the Question

4/16/2026

Congratulations grizzlies! You have been entered into a competition that no one signed you up for! The competition will entail the following: you (dearest grizzly) will compete with the entire student body for your right to have a voice! By fall 2027, you could have your very own data center on campus! If your voices are NOT heard, OU's campus could be undergoing some serious renovations, including, but not limited to, total takeover of parking lot P-35, rapid consumption of the earth's natural resources (i.e., water), and an overall disgruntlement of the student body. So, are you in for the challenge?

All across Michigan, data centers are starting to form in rapid succession, as lawmakers and policymakers continue to disregard the community's opinion for extra change in their pockets. Our own campus has been exploring the idea of a data center for the P-35 parking lot (as if parking is not absolutely insane already). The road map for such data center can be found on OU's website, which lists tentative dates for the approval and construction of such data center

As early as June 2025, the project was presented to the OU Board of Trustees in a public hearing, in which, the feasibility study was approved. From June to September of the same year, Fairmount Properties was selected to be the data centers developer. Currently, we are in the Feasibility Phase, which supposedly lasts from October of 2025 to June of this year. In this phase stakeholders and the Board of Trustees are analyzing possible programmatic needs, partnerships for profit, and will initiate business planning. If all succeeds according to the plan of the higher-ups, the data center could be developed in the Fall semester of 2027, into the Winter of 2028.

If you're ultimately confused as to the major problem with this endeavor, take a look at some recent studies that show the consequences of such data centers. At the top of the long list of negatives, rising energy bills the consumption of water should sound and the familiar if you pay attention to the agonizing media outlet which is the news. From their extremely large energy output, pollution also runs rampant in areas where data center occurs.

In terms of our very own proposed data center, OU will not be providing the energy needed, DTE will. But who pays for it? The taxpayers ladies and gentlemen, taxpayers. On top of this lovely information, staff and libraries are having their books stolen to train Large Language Models (LLMs), to which, SVP Stephen Mackey replied, "we take that seriously, this happens across the academy as whole. I’m not in the academy."

Mackey continued, in a town hall meeting, to address "the academy." With every question asked, followed "the academy." Sounds to me like Mackey brought this up to avoid saying he doesn't know the answer to a question.

So, make what you want of the situation, like data centers or not, but fully realize that your livelihood and the sake of our environment could be at stake because of one simple building on campus, and several thousand across the United States. The emergence of AI is a complicated matter, but one that requires all of our attention to make a difference.

Matt Weed - Web Content Director

Gehrig Hicks - Guest Writer