move in for the fall term. After four years of planning, ground was broken on October 18, 1996, for an $8.5 million sports, recreation, and health complex—Lloyd W. D. Walker Fieldhouse—though construction did not begin until the following spring. The completed fieldhouse, at Snelling and Taylor, opened on September 10, 1998. Klas Center, a modern, $7.1 million multi-use facility which includes the football field and a track, was built in 2003 to replace the aging Norton Field. As the campus was transformed by construction projects, attention turned to Hamline's roots in the summer of 1996. An archaeological dig headed by John McCarthy of the Institute of Minnesota Archaeology and anthropology professor Skip Messenger began at the site of Hamline's original building in Red Wing. The three-story brick building, constructed in 1855 and open in time for classes to begin in January 1856, closed in 1869 and was demolished in 1871. Since few records exist from that time, the exact location and dimensions of the original building were unknown until the archaeological dig. The dig found that the original building's foundation was insufficient for its size, leading to speculation that structural problems might have contributed to the building's closing and eventual demolition. 21st century controversies In the autumn of 2012, Hamline students and faculty protested the school's refusal to condemn the proposed Minnesota constitutional amendment that would have banned equal marriage rights for all citizens. Hamline's attempt to stay neutral on the issue was seen as inconsistent with the university's anti-discrimination policy and its espoused values of diversity and inclusiveness, as well as with its United Methodist heritage and identity, since the Minnesota Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church had voted to publicly oppose the amendment. In June 2014, Hamline's adjunct professors voted to form a union as part of the SEIU, making Hamline the first private university in Minnesota where adjunct faculty formed a union. On July 1, 2015, Fayneese Miller became the first African American to be the President of Hamline University and the second woman to hold that office. Teacher fired over Muhammad art In October 2022, a few students—led by the president of the university's Muslim Students Association's chapter—accused an adjunct professor of harboring "Islamophobia" for showing paintings of the Islamic prophet Muhammad in a class on the history of Islamic art. The professor had informed the students of the nature of the images in the