While Faculty Athletics Representative and Associate Professor of Sociology Brian Wolf said athletes can be both a joy and a pain to teach, they are important to higher education.
“We could probably do better by our student athletes,” Wolf said.
He said UI student athletes regularly get good GPAs, with 8 percent achieving a 4.0 last term. Graduation rates are also higher among student athletes, he said.
Wolf
“Our student athletes are very driven people,” he said. “A lot of them are very, very serious students.”
Faculty Sen. Stephan Flores of the College of Letters, Arts and Social Sciences said some faculty are concerned with how many classes athletes miss and asked Wolf if there were any regulations in place for it. Wolf said absences are a concern, and while traveling is a necessity for student athletes, there are rules.
Athletes also bring a lot of good to the university and to the U.S. as a whole, Wolf said. He described our society as “physically illiterate,” and said athletics have the power to transform and inspire others. UI athletes also bring diversity to the area, both in ethnicity and geographic location, he said.
“It gets people going to college who normally wouldn”t,” Wolf said.
Wolf said he knows a hot topic right now is UI”s dismissal from the Sun Belt Conference, but he didn”t know how interested Faculty Senate would be in the issue. Right now the university”s two main options is to move into the Big Sky Conference or play as an independent in the FBS Conference.
Faculty Sen. Sharon Stoll of the College of Education said she thought it may not be so bad to compete in the Big Sky, as the Vandals have been a more competitive team in a lower conference.
But there could be some consequences with moving to the Big Sky, Wolf said. If UI joins the Big Sky, the number of football scholarships available would drop from 85 to 63, he said. This could lead to a similar amount of women”s scholarships getting cut due to gender equity issues and that could result in the elimination of a women”s sport, although Wolf said nothing is set in stone.
Multiple senators spoke up against this news. Vice Chair of Faculty Senate Liz Brandt said she found it disturbing. Faculty Secretary Don Crowley said he doesn”t see why having fewer male scholarships than women”s is a problem at all.
“It seems to me that we could keep the same number of women”s sports, even if we ended up with more female scholarships than male scholarships,” Crowley said. “And I would find it surprising “¦ if anyone would come along and say “Oh gee, bad University of Idaho, you have more women”s sports than male sports.””
Erin Bamer can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @ErinBamer
knewfeminism
Wow! That's really interesting. I hadn't considered the consequences of changes conferences. Yeah. Cutting women's scholarships to match the number of men's? That doesn't sound like gender equity to me! I see what Bradley is saying too. Title IX is a two-way door, I guess. I think Athletics will have to make some very difficult choices as they adjust. Hopefully, there will be room for creative ideas and solutions.
Bradley LaPlante
Female sports scholarship are in the range of 30,000 dollars a year that's tuition room board (dorms) books and other expenses. It might be more than that. times that by twenty two. Now take into consideration that it is an entire sports team funded add a coaching salary two-three assistant coaching salary's. A travel and hotel expense budget. General upkeep and everything in between and we are getting in the million dollar range. We currently pay for non-revenue generated sports in a number of different ways. Student fees-revenue sports-and state or tax funding. Title IX requires that female and male scholarships are equal. football is the reason why there are so many female sports around the country. Other than that, every sport, with the exception of Football, mens basketball and a couple of womens basketball programs, are an expense to a school. That means that the money the volleyball team, swim team, golf team, soccer, swim and dive team and tennis team generate is less than the money those sports cost to operate. Sorry to say this but if Idaho goes back to the Big Sky then a women's program will get cut. Its a financial thing not a moral thing. So yes, the people who are going to question why Idaho has more womens sports then men will be the State board of education, Idaho senators, and Idaho congressmen then they are going to axe the program.