The Board of Regents decided Tuesday to allow the University to enter into ground lease agreements for the Intramural Fields parking deck and the Performing Arts Center parking deck.

A roughly two-acre portion of land between fields six and seven will be the site of the Intramural Fields parking deck, which will contain 500 spaces. Construction is anticipated to begin immediately and is expected to open in August.

Connor McCarthy, Student Government Association president, said in a phone interview from the board meeting in Atlanta that SGA has not specifically talked about the deck that will be built.

“I know the funding comes from pretty restricted sources,” he said. “So funding is allocated specifically for those projects.”

The Performing Arts Center deck will hold 464 cars and will be adjacent to the Center. Deck construction will begin immediately and is expected to be complete in November.

The BOR also decided the plus/minus grading system still will not be used to determine HOPE eligibility but can be used for graduate school applications.

“It was very strictly outlined that your HOPE GPA would not be calculated by your plus/minus GPA,” McCarthy said.

McCarthy said the Honors Program Student Council held a forum Monday night where students expressed interest to keep the HOPE GPA calculation on the A through F scale. The Board’s Committee on Academic Affairs voted to permanently instate the plus/minus grading system, however, for overall GPA calculation, McCarthy said. The University and Georgia State University are the only universities in the state to use the system.

The University began using plus/minus grading as a pilot program in summer 2006 and since has completed a study proving the new system had no effect on grades, said John Millsaps, Board spokesman, in a phone interview Tuesday.

The Board discussed whether to calculate GPAs to one or two decimal points, McCarthy said.

“[The Board] would like it to be two significant digits [after the decimal point],” he said. “I don’t know how it’s going to be implemented, but I would imagine it would be up to the discretion of the university.”

The Board approved sub-rental agreements for four fraternity houses – Pi Kappa Alpha, Tau Epsilon Phi, Sigma Nu and Phi Delta Theta. A certificate of occupancy cannot be obtained before July 1 for the houses.

The Board also approved a memorandum of understanding to formalize the partnership between the University and the Medical College of Georgia to increase the production of physicians in the state, Millsaps said.

“[It is] a way to formalize the process of all of the elements, so all the parties understand what their responsibilities are,” he said.

The memorandum states the new medical school campus will be operational by 2010 and a dean will be appointed by MCG.

Since the initiation of the spring semester $100 student fee, McCarthy said SGA has been closely watching the actions of the Regents in relation to the University.

“Ever since the whole fee thing came around, we’ve been keeping up a lot more closely with the Board of Regents,” he said. “When the fee came up we only had about 20 hours notice and we did a pretty good job getting down [to Atlanta].”