I attended the Athletic Department’s defense of its proposed fee increase at the Undergraduate Student Government meeting Feb. 11. Chancellor Beggs stated that four years ago, students said they wanted to see SIUC sports maintained at Division I. As I wasn’t here four years ago, I have no idea what kind of survey was done of the student population concerning this issue, but I wonder if students would have to agreed to this if they had known that this would cause fees to increase so rapidly.

Chancellor Beggs has stated that one of the goals of his administration is to maintain our Carnegie II research institution status. As we are in no danger of losing this status, this does not seem a very lofty goal. Wouldn’t it be better for the institution to use additional revenue from student fees to strive for Carnegie I status and downgrade sports to Division II? I am not against college sports. Anyone that knows me knows that I am a huge Nebraska football fan. The difference is that big time sports programs, like Nebraska, make money for their schools, and thus don’t feed off of student fees. I hate to break the news to some people, but SIUC will never be a big time sports school, and it will never attract students because of its sports programs.

It was brought up in this same meeting that the men’s basketball coach makes $100,000 per year. Athletic Director Jim Hart defended this salary stating that you must pay more money for quality coaches. If salary is related to quality, what does this say about the SIUC faculty members? How many faculty members, if any, make $100,000 per year? Shouldn’t the least important faculty member be more important than a basketball coach?

Advertisement

In a time when we are looking at cutting graduate programs and tenure-track faculty positions, why are we increasing funding to athletics? Does the women’s basketball team really have to travel to Puerto Rico for a basketball tournament? Do we really want to increase funding for athletic scholarships? Athletes are required to maintain a whopping 2.25 GPA. If SIUC wants to offer additional scholarships, offer a full ride scholarship to the top two graduating students of each Illinois high school. This would give SIUC a reputation for a least respecting academic excellence. As it stands, we have a reputation for partying and accepting anyone. The administration would add athletics to this list. Where do academics fit in?

As a last thought, it seems the solution to the athletic fee problem is simple. CHARGE ADMISSION! This gives students a choice in whether or not their hard earned money should go to support athletics.