More than six years after the University of Utah agreed to build an indoor track facility honoring slain student-athlete Lauren McCluskey, her mother says she still has not seen the progress she hoped for. The university has until Dec. 31, 2030, to raise the money and construct the facility, and if it misses that deadline, it owes the Lauren McCluskey Foundation an additional $3 million by June 30, 2031.
The pledge dates back to the October 2020 settlement the University of Utah reached with McCluskey's parents, resolving two lawsuits stemming from her murder on campus in 2018, according to the University of Utah. That settlement totaled $13.5 million, including $10.5 million paid directly to her parents and $3 million to the foundation they established in her name. As part of the deal, the university pledged to raise funds to construct an indoor track facility by the end of 2030, the university said.
Jill McCluskey, who co-founded the Lauren McCluskey Foundation with a mission to improve campus safety and, in her words, do good things in her daughter's name, told KUTV that losing Lauren remains painful. She has praised the university's broader campus safety reforms since 2018, but when it comes to the track facility specifically, she described the communication as sparse. “I would have liked to have seen more progress,” she said.
A Promise Tied to a Painful History
Lauren McCluskey was 21 years old and a track and field athlete at the University of Utah when she was murdered on campus in 2018. In the weeks before her death, her abusive ex-boyfriend stalked and harassed her, and she had reported safety concerns to campus police. University of Utah campus police did not follow up on her case, according to the seed facts underlying this report. The killing exposed serious flaws in how the school responded to intimate partner violence, and continuing revelations spurred widespread reform, as The Salt Lake Tribune has reported.
In the aftermath, the university overhauled its campus police department and, per the Chronicle of Higher Education, established a violence-prevention center, created a chief safety officer position and increased training. The indoor track facility was meant to be the capstone of that reckoning — what the university itself has called the final piece of Lauren's legacy, per KUTV's report.
Fundraising Depends on Both Sides, Settlement Says
The settlement agreement states that the university's fundraising success depends substantially on participation and support from the McCluskey family, and both parties agreed as part of the deal that they would be fundraising together, KUTV reported. Jill McCluskey has offered to personally help raise money for the facility, but as of the station's report, the university had not accepted that offer, and she said it had not done so yet.
On the design itself, McCluskey has signaled flexibility. She has said she would accept a facility shared with the university's football team, so long as women have a place to practice. “But as long as the women have a place to practice, I'm happy with that,” she told the outlet. The university's own fundraising page, hosted at giving.utah.edu, describes plans for an indoor practice facility that would include an indoor track in her honor, intended to let the track and field team practice, compete and host indoor competitions year-round.
Master Plan Clears a Hurdle, but Key Questions Remain
The University of Utah's campus master plan, which has been in development for three years, cleared a major step recently. According to KUTV, a university spokesperson said the Board of Trustees approved the master plan on Oct. 26, 2026, while the university's own announcement states trustees approved the 160-page planning document at an Oct. 13 meeting. Either way, the plan reserves space for the indoor track facility south of the football facilities on Guardsman Way, the spokesperson told the station.
Rebecca Walsh, the university's director of communications, said approval of the master plan makes fundraising for the facility possible, according to KUTV's report. A university spokesperson agreed to an interview with the outlet after the trustees meeting, and the university separately responded to an earlier inquiry with an emailed statement emphasizing its broader efforts to honor McCluskey while briefly mentioning the track. The university has said that approving the master plan does not itself approve any specific project, dollar amount or building for the facility.
The 2026 master plan is meant to guide campus growth and construction over the next decade and includes athletics facilities among the areas the university plans to update, according to the university's announcement. For now, the university maintains that work continues on what it calls the final piece of Lauren's legacy. With a little over four years left before the 2030 deadline, how quickly that work translates into an actual building remains to be seen.
