For years, UAF’s athletics department has been in fiscal trouble, struggling to meet the financial needs of Division I and II programs at a small public university. The department has simply been spending more money than it gets and digging itself deeper into debt. Over the years a lot of different options have been reviewed — pay cuts for coaches, cuts in scholarships, reductions in travel.
In December, college administrators approved their solution to chronic athletics overspending: Another levy on students.
A new athletics support fee of $8 per credit will be assessed beginning in the fall, with the partial compensation that athletic events will be free to all students, not just those who pay for a semester sports pass.
The fee is not without precedent, as most schools in similar divisions with similar athletics budgets levy similar fees. Many in the Fairbanks community, along with faculty and staff, supported the fee. I do believe that the athletic department needed to do something and perhaps this fee is the best answer,
But one group was conspicuously left out of the decision-making process surrounding the proposal: the students who will be paying that new fee.
ASUAF President Jake Hamburg was informed of the new fee proposal in mid-December, just before the paperwork requesting the fee was making its way to the Chancellor’s Office. With winter break just around the corner, he and his fellow student representatives were left powerless, with no time to challenge its imposition.
As an advocate of affordability, Hamburg said he is bothered by a new fee when knows students who have dropped out of college because they can’t afford it.
Like many students, I wouldn’t voluntarily pay $66 just to support the athletic department and get into games just as I don’t voluntarily pay the optional $35 for a sports pass. Nothing against the athletics department, it’s just not something I have a lot of interest in.
Though the increase in fees isn’t a crippling amount, it is more the principle I find disturbing than anything else.
The fact is, by the time students had an opportunity to contribute their input, the decision was already made, and that strikes me as unfair and disrespectful. If this fee is truly the solution to the fiscal problem facing UAF athletics, those footing the bill should have been given a chance to speak their mind.