The new GATA Fountain in front of Moody Coliseum will be completed by Homecoming Weekend.
The idea for a new GATA Fountain began in 2016, and GATA hoped the new fountain would ring in their centennial anniversary in 2020. However, COVID disrupted this process.
The project officially broke ground in April of this year. GATA alumni and sponsors like Senior Alumni and University Relations Officer April Young have been involved with the idea of a new fountain since the beginning stages, through COVID and during the final stages of the project.
“Once it became a better time to start having those conversations with our alumni again, once the university felt like they could move into that project as well – because it’s a very combined project with the university – we got things moving,” Young said. “It really was about a year ago things really started moving very quickly.”
Current students are no stranger to the construction currently taking place outside of Moody but Homecoming Weekend marks the unveiling of the GATA Fountain as the newest addition to recent campus renovations. Senior Vice President for Operations Kevin Campbell helped coordinate the construction of the new fountain.
“We’re really excited about this kind of being like the exclamation point on Moody,” Campbell said.
GATA sponsors were the main financial backing for the new GATA Fountain, making the new fountain possible. During Homecoming Weekend, GATA will be hosting a wide range of activities and events to honor their current members, donors and alumni.
Current GATA President and senior Biology major from San Antonio Alayah Jones is hoping to use this weekend to honor the past while looking forward to GATA’s future as well.
“We’re having a lot of alumni come in who haven’t been able to come in for the past couple years,” Jones said. “We have a video of a lot of our past presidents to kind of talk about what GATA meant to them at the time they were president. Getting all of our active members to see that and see how we’ve evolved as a club and sisterhood, that’s going to be so amazing.”
For Jones, GATA signifies family and community and she hopes the new fountain can become a special place for everyone. Although the retirement of the previous GATA Fountain may be bittersweet, it’s no doubt that the new fountain will be a vital addition to campus.
“I’m hoping that our new area is just a comfort for people; they all gather around, they just sit, they have community, they eat, they study, they just really utilize that space while they’re at ACU,” Jones said.
On the Friday of Homecoming Weekend, there will be a come-and-go gathering around the new fountain for its debut. On Saturday morning, GATA members and alumni will have breakfast around the fountain and sing there for the first time.
After, GATA will march in the Homecoming Parade, sing around the fountain again, host a tailgate before the football game and host their GATA Gala for members and alumni.
“We want to make sure we let our members know that we appreciate that even though this is a busy week we’re going to be heading into, we appreciate all of the time they’ve sacrificed to help out,” Jones said.
To see the official calendar of events and learn more about the new GATA Fountain, visit http://acu.edu/gata.
