Today and Tuesday, students at Utah State University will vote to determine whether they want their fees to increase $65 a semester to enhance the budget of the athletics department.
The issue was covered in depth in Sunday’s Herald Journal by a great Kim Burgess article. Athletics Director Scott Barnes will be on For the People at 4:10 this afternoon to talk about the increase and his department’s reasoning behind the request.
I oppose the student fee increase. I can’t stress enough how bad an idea I believe it is and how wrong it is for Utah State University at this time. And at the same time, I respect Scott Barnes and the job he’s done so far at USU. He is truly in a lose-lose situation with this proposal. The truth is though, men like Scott Barnes will be long gone while students at USU will still be paying the consequences of a fee increase such as this.
When Mr. Barnes is on the air tonight, you will hear phrases such as “tipping point” and “athletics is the university’s front porch.” You’ll also hear arguments that USU athletics is experiencing financial extremes, i.e. when compared to other schools of similar enrollment and budgets, USU raises more money on their own than most others and has lower student fees than most others.
These may be realities, but they are not relevant, because no matter how much you compare USU to Louisiana Tech, Fresno State, Boise State, Ohio University, Western Michigan or whichever other schools names are thrown out, one simple fact remains: We’re Utah State, not someone else.
The argument is thrown out that athletics enhances the student experience, and I absolutely agree with that. There are some great times at athletics events, but here again, is it the responsibility of the student body as a whole to fund these experiences at a level higher than they already are? For me, the proper way for students to show their appreciation for the experiences they gain through athletics events is by joining the booster club after graduation or, heck, during school.
What we have on campus now is a department who openly says they didn’t plan well enough entering the WAC and they now run a $2 million-plus budget deficit. They’re asking for a bailout much like several U.S. companies have from the government. They’re asking for their constituents, the student body, to bail them out through a compulsory tax. We don’t like this on the national level, and we don’t like it here.
Today, if you’re a USU student, log on to https://vote.usu.edu and vote against this measure. If you aren’t a student, but know someone who is, tell them to vote against it.
Some things are just not right. This is one of them.
None of the info on the vote tells us what exactly the money will go toward. I think that like the government bailout, where companies need to be accountable to let us know where the money is going, the USU athletics program needs to be up front. Please ask Barnes what the proposed fees will fund. If I vote for it, I want to know exactly where my money is going, rather than deciding to simply “enhance” my USU experience.
Please ask Mr. Barnes what he thinks of fraud. On the Facebook group “Save USU football (please read, by Lance Brown)” we are asked to take our friend’s ID cards to swipe at the gate so that we can inflate our numbers and stay in a D-I program. This is wrong, earlier this year I had an acquaintance try to get into a B-Ball game using his friend’s ID card. The card was confiscated. Fraud is Fraud. The athletics dept. can’t have its cake and eat it too. That D-I status is oh so important because of the revenue it generates. Inflating attendance for the sake of money is the type of thing that should be reported to the NCAA and USU should lose its status as a D-I school for setting such a bad example for its students. Maybe then we could get back to getting our education.