Student Refuse to Save Football

Because of increased costs, an integral part of the Division of Athletics' plan to save football and Division I-A status is to increase student fees by $12.50 per semester (Bell 2002).  However, there is plenty of evidence that students do not want to bail out Athletics in this way.

In March 2003, students voted on a referendum known as Measure Y.  This measure was a consolidated fee increase, including fee increases for several parts of the university, including academics, the health center, and Associated Students.  The measure included an $6 per semester increase in student Instructionally Related Activity (IRA) fees, with the entire amount going to Athletics.  This measure failed narrowly.  Because so many different fees were included in this one measure, it is impossible to determine why it failed.  However, there is good reason to believe that one of the reasons it failed is because it contained an athletics fee increase.

Following the defeat of Measure Y, the Division of Athletics submitted their proposal to the Campus Fee Advisory Committee, hoping that the committee would endorse the increase in the athletics fee in spite of its rejection by the students, thereby placing pressure on President Caret to impose the fee unilaterally.  However, the Campus Fee Advisory Committee did not go along.  On the day the committee met, 5 student members and 5 faculty/administrative members of the committee were present.  The committee voted unanimously to reject the Athletics fee increase.  This means that every single student on the committee voted against this fee, including students from both the Spartan and Impact parties, who rarely agree on anything.  Furthermore, on the same day, the committee approved recommending student fee increases for academics, the health care center, and the Student Union.  Clearly, the student members of this committee were not opposed to fee increases in general.  They were only opposed to an athletics fee.  This strongly suggests that Measure Y would have passed if the athletics fee component had not been included.

What this further implies is that Athletics is dragging the rest of the university down.  Because the administration attempted to trick students into passing a fee they knew would not pass on its own merits, they attempted to link it to other, more popular fees.  Unfortunately, this tactic failed, and the entire university has lost as a result.