yesterday fresno state's president did something that would warm the heart of g.w. bush, he ignored his constituents. welty's position as president of the university is slightly different than president of the united states, but he still is supposed to lead following the will of the people.
you see, fresno state's student body voted against a fee hike. sure, it was only a proposed fee hike of $52 per semester. but, the overall cost of going to school is also going up. factor in the crap economy that we're in, and $104 more a year isn't something you just want to tack on.
why does fsu need the money? well, a little of it ($20) goes to academics, and that's good. the rest, to athletics. this is raise would be a $52 increase, and none of the student fee currently goes to athletics (although students do currently pay a $7 fee for athletics in at another point). pretty big dip into student's pockets to help out sports, who get 62% of the increase.
this is a school that has repeatedly bungled finances. it's been shown that the administration was diverting funds devoted for academics to athletics. this same group of leaders had been sued and lost 3 times for discriminating against female coaches/athletic department staff. and, they've settled out of court similar grievances with faculty. sure, these judgments are handled by insurance, but the behavior that caused it doesn't exactly inspire confidence in welty and his administration.
and now you want more money for sports? well, g.w. welty, just take it. ignore the will of the people. ignore the student vote. ignore the students that spoke out at meetings on the issue.
this isn't written by someone that is anti-sports. i'm a coach. and, i'm a coach of a program that is facing budget cuts (at another university). i understand what it is to try and run a college athletic program in difficult economic times. i'm only an assistant and i see how hard it can be. sports need money. but you can't just ignore the stated will of the people you represent.
3 comments:
Aaaah, but if you look at the letter to the editor I posted a couple weeks ago, it's clear that 0% of the students were opposed to the fee hike.
but that was sent by someone that couldn't do math. although the amount of student participation in the vote was low it wasn't 0%. hell, it was actually 5% of the students that voted on the issue. and, others spoke up @ referendums on the issue.
Oh I totally agree. Whatever representative group of the student body formed, it was obviously anti-fee hike and yet, there it is.
I feel like it's just one more instance of university administrations "giving voice" to the student body but only in the sense that one might let a small child have a voice.
"What would you like to do today Ralphie? Oh? Eat ice cream and stay home from school? Well, I wasn't really going to let you do what you wanted to do unless it fell in line with what I wanted to do. Tough."
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