The Joe Vandal statue unveiled on Saturday, Nov. 8, was commissioned for the purpose of honoring the significant financial contribution to the construction of the Kibbie Dome by University of Idaho students, after the stadium’s name was changed to P1FCU Kibbie Dome in 2023. The credit union paid $5 million for the naming rights, replacing the “ASUI” in the dome’s name.
“It’s fitting to add a tribute to the University of Idaho students and their contributions to this facility,” UI President Scott Green said at the statue’s unveiling event.
So far, the statue is not the memorial it was proposed to be. It seems more like a campus decoration that garnered support by presenting itself as something significant.
While the statue is said to recognize ASUI, the words taken from the stadium were not returned to the statue, which has simply been called the Joe Vandal statue. Beside it, an empty wire frame waits for a plaque which may yet remember the contributions.
If the words to be engraved, however, are anything like the content of Green’s speech, the contributions made by students and the protest levied against the mandatory fee will be reduced to a few sentences about positive collaboration among the student body, and not the reality as financially struggling students had to scrape up a portion of their paycheck each semester.
Students attending the university during and after the dome’s construction were required to pay a $37 fee per semester, according to The Argonaut archives from Feb. 9, 1973. Adjusting for 2025 inflation, that is almost $300 a semester, or $600 per academic year.
“The entire cost of the stadium will be absorbed by the student body of the U of I and what donations can be obtained,” the article wrote. The stadium would cost over $7.8 million by its completion in 1975.
According to the same article, these fees were to be paid by students for 30 years, and that the student body at the time numbered 7200.
UI alum Tom La Pointe said, in an interview with The Argonaut in 2024, that the fees were charged to students for between 10 to 15 years, not 30 years.
The dome was paid for by many generations of UI students, some of which graduated before they could ever use the facility.
By today’s standards, $600 a year is a significant cost to place on students, and UI students in the 1970s felt the same.
According to former ASUI President pro tempore John Mark Nuttman, students wrote “paid in protest” on the subject lines of the checks they were required to pay each semester.
In the Sept. 26, 1975, edition of The Argonaut, controversy arose as to whether UI alum William Kibbie, who promised a $300,000 donation towards the dome, had actually made the contribution and was not being arbitrarily honored alongside the student body. The original name of the dome was The William H. Kibbie ASUI Activity Center.
The article wrote that ASUI president Dirk Kempthorne had provided the suggestion of honoring the “generous offer” to the administration, but also acknowledged that by the dome’s completion, the students would have invested some $8 million into the facility.
In a published communication from the university, it was clarified that the donation would come in 1976 or 1977, and an opinion piece concluded that the character of Kibbie was not that of a man who wished to buy a name.
When ASUI was removed from the dome’s name in 2023, alums were vocal about their opposition to the decision, especially since Kibbie continued to be honored for his donation. The sum of money was not comparable, and beyond that, the question had always remained as to whether Kibbie had paid his donation in full.
Controversy continued as the university administration forced restrictive container and beverage policies onto the student body in the first football season held in the completed facility. This, The Argonaut wrote Sept. 23, 1975, demonstrated that despite their financial contributions, the students had no control over the stadium.
When the container and beverage policy proposal was met with criticism in spring 1975, rather than allowing student opinions to be voiced, the administration decided to publish the policy “unacceptable to students” over the summer. Beyond this, the article addressed the misappropriation of funds, which were again student generated, by purchasing nets and a PA system at a higher than reasonable price.
“The idea that a statue of any kind would be adequate enough to somehow denote the contributions of students who for 10-15 years paid student fees is something I heartily disagree with,” La Pointe said. “The building itself was our monument.”
2025 marks the 50th anniversary of the Kibbie Dome. The students who paid this fee are still alive but are already being forgotten. Journalism, by principle, seeks to publish the truth, and whether intentional or not, the current university administration is sanitizing the history of the Kibbie Dome. In the absence of any other publication on the topic, The Argonaut feels compelled to write about the meaning of the now removed ASUI from the dome’s title.
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