Few people would benefit from proposed sports fee
I am writing this letter in response to the fee proposed by Athletics Director Herb Deromedi. According to the Sept. 12 article in CM Life, the sports fee would generate about $1.3 million.
What is interesting is this: This fee helps almost no one it charges. Very few people get any benefit from any of the money. The football players get some new turf; field hockey players gets a new field, and a new women’s sport get added. Why should new students have to pay $300 for things they’ll probably never get to use?
I can think of alternative uses for $1.3 million that seem a bit more important than new grass on the football field. For instance, that seems like plenty of money to have kept the Testing Center open, which provided an extremely valuable service to students and teachers, and was something almost everybody used. Or it could have been used to prevent some of the downsizing of faculty. Or if the board really doesn’t want to support academics, there is also the shuttle service we could have kept going. It could even be used for more entertainment acts.
There are also alternative ways to raise money for sports — like actually charging students for games. If students really think football is important, they’ll pay a few dollars to go see them play. Alumni surely wouldn’t mind paying a few extra dollars for their tickets, either. But if it turns out that the people who actually care about the football team and like to watch the games don’t think it’s important enough to support with their money, why should the rest of us be charged?
Is athletics really that much more important than academics?
Why is this the only proposed fee?
