Aaron Vehling

People can’t go deep into debt without consequences, and the same should be true about the athletics department.

The administration hasn’t tracked down the exact causes of the $219,575.90 budget deficit, but administrators said they are analyzing the situation.

Vice Chancellor Andy Soll said solving the athletics budget crisis is the No. 1 priority as far as segregated fee budgeting goes. It’s odd that a department with debatable benefit to the university becomes the most overspent department in the time of a budget crisis.

The athletics department receives the biggest piece of the student segregated fees pie. According to Director of Business Services David Gessner, athletics is allocated $510,695 for fiscal year 2004, which ends July 30. The department also receives funding through ticket sales, concession sales, fund raising and other miscellaneous sources of income.

Administrators stated a few options to fix the deficit in an article in the Oct. 2 issue of The Spectator. One solution would be increasing student segregated fees. We shouldn’t pay more money to a department that is already deep in debt. The best option is for the athletics department to figure out what went wrong during the last five years and why that mistake wasn’t dealt with earlier.

When the deficit broke the $100,000 point more than a year ago, a red light should have gone off in the department signalling that something was wrong.

It has been getting more recognition and more money than it deserves.

Last year, Student Senate approved free tickets for all students to sporting events, costing the student segregated fee account $34,000. This does not benefit all students – it benefits the few who go to the events.

In a football game earlier this season, football coach Todd Hoffner estimated student attendance at 1,350, which is about 13 percent of the student population. This was considered good attendance.

Let’s face it, student attendance at sporting events on this campus is less than stellar. It is especially not significant enough to warrant making all students pay for the admission of a few people.

Even at Homecoming games, a large portion of the student audience leaves around halftime.

All free tickets do is give a discount to students who already go to the games.

Paying for admission at a game was a good way to spend a couple hours and still have enough cash to have a good night at the bars.

When one looks at the composition of Senate last semester, a few senators pushed for this measure. They were student athletes.

We should not increase student spending on athletics, but we shouldn’t reduce it because it still serves a purpose on this campus.

An upside of athletics, aside from the enjoyment of the athletes, is community and alumni relations. Attendance by community members is amazing at sporting events. They are the ones who fill the stands.

If athletics wants more money, pass the collection plate around during games and hope people are very generous.

The athletics department needs some tough love, and that means it should not be given an increased allocation until it shows that it can fix its problems and stick to a balanced budget.

The department should have seen the crisis as it developed and found a solution months ago when the deficit began to swell.

Soll said student input will be needed to help solve the problem. I suggest the university hire an accountant for the department to prevent future problems. Also, a foul-tempered, ex-con, debt relief counselor named Rocco should be hired to periodically threaten the lives of every department member’s pets to make absolutely sure the budget is followed to the cent.

In addition to on-field efforts, the athletics department needs to give 110 percent to solve this budget problem.

Dowd is a senior print journalism major and editorial editor of The Spectator. “A Dose of Dowd”appears every Thursday on the Opinion page.