THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
WEDNESDAY APRIL 10
NEWS
3A
STUDENT SENATE
Athletics fee gets left out of proposed budget cuts
BY BRIANNE
PFANNENSTIEL
bpfannenstiel@kansan.com
Student Senators have spent countless hours reviewing and revising fees during the past several weeks. As they prepare to make final recommendations regarding fee cuts to the full Senate tonight, some senators have noticed a conspicuous lack of change in one area of funding: women's and nonrevenue sports.
The fee began when the student body passed a referendum in 2006 to increase funding for women's sports. More students voted on the referendum than voted for the student body president and vice president that year.
Senators have the authority to overturn any referendum 12 months after it passes.
"The fee review committee and a good portion of student senators would really like to see that fee cut instead of other fees that provide a lot more tangible and substantial benefits to students," said Eric Foss, student senator and member of the fee review subcommittee.
Each student currently pays a $40 sports fee every sememster, $35 of which is part of a contractual obligation. The remaining $5 is not under contract and could be cut to save money.
But Chancellor Robert Hemenway, who must approve any fee recommendations made by Senate, has made it clear to senators he would not support any such decrease in funding.
Last year, Senate proposed a cut of 25 cents to the sports fee in order to provide funds for the sustainability fee. Foss said that the decision was "unilaterally overturned" by the chancellor and that no cuts were made to the sports fee.
Foss, along with other senators,
expressed the idea that if Senate
proposed a similar cut this year, the chancellor would again overturn the decision.
"I don't think hed blink twice doing it," said Brian Hardouin, chairman of the Senate fee review subcommittee. "When he removed the 25 cents before, he didn't seem to give a whole lot of pause at it and I don't know that anything's changed since last time. The chancellor has already taken the position that it's the students' responsibility to fund women's sports."
Hemenway said in an e-mail that he originally vetoed the cut to the sports fee because he was in favor of providing funding to Title IX sports.
Title IX states that "no person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance."
The most public application of this bill has been to high school and collegiate athletics.
"The administration should be supportive of Title IX funding," Hemenway said. "Seeing 16,000 women's basketball fans on Saturday speaks for itself."
Other senators, however, said they did not think it was the student body's responsibility to support Title IX funding.
"Title IX is a requirement of the athletics department," Hardouin said. "The purpose of Title IX was to distribute some of that revenue from revenue-generating sports to other sports. I think students' paying for it is kind of deceiving."
Associate Athletics Director Jim Marchiony said it was important for everyone to take responsibility for providing funding for Title IX. He said that if the athletics department did not comply with Title IX requirements, the entire University
would lose federal funding.
Saving money has been the main objective of the fee review subcommittee since Senate received a mandate from Hemenway and the Kansas Board of Regents saying no overall increase in fees would be accepted.
Alex Porte, Great Falls, Va., junior and student senator, said the extra $5 in the sports fee was used to fund things such as office supplies and travel expenses, and that he didn't feel guilty cutting it. He said he thought Athletics would able to absorb the cost of the $5 cut without much difficulty.
"Athletics runs a pretty significant profit," Porte said. "The profit margin between revenue and expenses is more than what that fee generates. So to me it seems like they can still have a profit if that fee were cut."
Marchiony said that Athletics would have to find ways to make up the cuts, and that possibilities included raising the cost of the student combo ticket package.
Hardouin said the final fee recommendations presented to Senate tonight would not include funding cuts to the sports fee. He said that the bill could be amended to include cuts to the sports fee, but that it would need a two-thirds vote. Hardouin said he did not think a bill with a cut to Athletics would receive much support.
Foss said he thought it was important for both the student body and the chancellor to understand that the money would have to come from Athletics or from other programs.
"It's probably better if we cut it out of Athletics, but it's unlikely that will happen, because the chancellor has already shown that he's reluctant to do that," Foss said.
— Edited by Brandy Entsminger
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ASSOCIATED PRESS
A group of Humboldt Penguins enters the water area of their new habitat for the first time. Tuesday, at the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle. Twenty of the endangered penguins, which normally inhabit the hot, dry coastlines in Peru and Chile, will live in the zoo's new S6.5 million exhibit, which is scheduled to open to the public on May 2.
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As of Tuesday at least 4,266 members of the U.S. military had died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
At least 3,425 military personnel died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.
The AP count is two fewer than the Defense Department's tally, last updated Tuesday at 10 a.m. EDT.
The British military has reported 179 deaths; Italy, 33; Ukraine, 18; Poland, 21; Bulgaria,
13; Spain, 11; Denmark, seven;
El Salvador, five; Slovakia, four;
Latvia and Georgia, three each;
Estonia, Netherlands, Thailand
and Romania, two each; and
Australia, Hungary, Kazakhstan and
South Korea, one death each.
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Acting U.S. Attorney Marietta Parker announced in a news release Tuesday that jurors found 33-year-old Amarpreet Singh guilty Monday of three counts of harboring illegal aliens.
The release said one of the workers at his Globe Restaurant died after complaining he was being forced to work.
Singh faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in federal prison and a fine up to $250,000 on each count.
- Associated Press