With its confusing sub-levels and multiple stairwells, navigating your way through the Holmes Student Center can make you wish you had a compass.

So the administration’s decision to renovate the structure is a good move that will not only ease its maze-like throughway, but make it more easily accessible to handicapped individuals.

What’s even more puzzling than finding your way through the HSC is the extreme delay of these plans. The Northern Star reported Thursday NIU’s Finance and Facilities department doesn’t plan to finish this remodeling for 10 to 15 years.

If the HSC is so badly in need of remodeling, why will students have to wait more than a decade? Funding is one issue: the revamped HSC will likely increase student fees, and NIU will have to marginally increase these over time in anticipation of the construction process.

A solution could come from donors. NIU completed the construction of the Barsema Alumni and Visitors Center in October and recently began construction of the Academic and Athletic Performance Center in the north end zone of Huskie Stadium. Perhaps this same donor pool could be probed to contribute to a much-needed HSC remodeling.

A HSC remodel could bring more dining options to students and better serve as the communal, student haven it was designed to be when it was built.

NIU made a good start by proposing the changes, but if the HSC remodel is as needed as Finance and Facilities makes it out to be, the changes should be accelerated.

In the meantime, a compass might be a good investment.