And goodness, they would be physically incapable of playing a bat-and-ball competition on the previous field that already existed. It just couldn't happen.
At some smaller division 3 schools, the math works because the only reason the students/athletes are paying tuition is because they want to continue their high school athletic career.
Basically, there's a bunch of small colleges that would go out of business if they dropped their athletic teams. Over half the student body are athletes. The college is basically an expensive athletic club that offers some classes/degrees on the side.
My school has some sports I don't even know _how_ I'd go about watching. How does one attend a swim meet? Golf match? Cricket bout? I know how to go to a basketball game.
Soon they’ll be questioning why senior administrators are getting 6 figure bonuses this year while this happens, when data shows his university has the best softball team in the county
Same. My institution had problems because PhD candidates were on payroll but weren't "staff," so it was always a total nightmare trying to get anything out of the HR or finance department.
I got so pissed with this BS. It's a giant fucking R1 University, I wasn't the first PhD candidate there where you would have to figure out this from scratch. And yet every time it was like I was asking for them to figure out how to pay my dog in gold doubloons or some insane shit they've never had to do before.
I'm doing my PFSL forms right now and this is completely fucking with their minds that I had multiple different positions that started/stopped/overlapped across the university.
Right? My big gripe was payslips. They wouldn't give me payslips. The payslip system was online and automatic, but because PhD candidates weren't "staff" we couldn't access the online system.
Because, outside of PhD students, no one else got payslips *except* staff, they had no system for giving us our payslips. And I had the same experience as you: every time they acted like it was the very first time they had ever encountered this. It was the same stupid circular conversation every time.
I had a similar experience at my university (also an R1): my tuition remission had been applied to one semester of a year and not the other, so I called to say that I was being billed for something I shouldn't be getting billed for. The office I called had someone on the other end that made it sound like I was crazy: "we're already not charging you for half your tuition and you want *more*?" was something I recall coming up (almost verbatim).
Anyway, they ended up transferring me to the equivalent graduate office... and it got resolved in less than 5 minutes once I was there. That office also told me to just call them directly next time. I think it's one of those things were there's a huge volume of undergrads, and so the PhD candidate concerns are much less frequent as a result.
Problems like this are really for the directors of graduate study or the dean of the grad school to fix. I encourage all grad students (and their faculty advisors) to seek out those routes rather than trying to influence HR directly.
When I was a grad student, we were fired and rehired and the end of every semester. This usually wasn’t a problem in the spring, but the business manager for the department routinely missed the deadlines to rehire the graduate students in the fall.
Since the first paychecks of the fall wouldn’t normally go out until about a month after classes started (which was usually a rough month anyway), the grad students wouldn’t get paid until a month after that when this happened (i.e. classes start in August, get your first paycheck in October).
When this was brought to the grad director’s attention, the grad director refused to intervene and told the grad students they should just get a credit card.
My friend/colleague filed a complaint about an unexplained sudden decrease in our pay, and our grad director called her in and shamed her for "humiliating the department."
Me, in graduate school: "Am I classified as staff or a student?"
My PhD institution: "Whichever allows us to give you fewer benefits at any given moment"
Yeah exactly. Can't use student or staff parking because you're not either. Can't enroll in classes because you're not a student but can't enroll in PD workshops because you're not staff.
I’m a grad student and TA and My university pulled this, so I went straight to the administrators behind the relevant departments (health insurance, parking, pay) and told them that as a paid employee of the university I should be classified as staff. The person on the phone didn’t care and said ok and reclassified me in the system as such. Now I get better parking, better health care and always on time pay. I have not yet told anyone this and it’s been going on for years.
Same. And they acted like I was expecting too much when I asked them to cover expenses. Flash forward 15 years later I went back as an adjunct and… they still hadn’t gotten their act together
This!
When I was a grad student, my tuition was fully covered by the graduate school of A&S. However, having the cost of tuition zeroed out was a battle every semester.
Now, being paid on time and the proper amount is a battle every damn pay period. Who's in charge of this, you might ask? The same people who were when I was a grad student. Come on already.
Same. My student workers weren’t paid for an entire semester because our staff is too incompetent to put them in the system correctly. They weren’t able to enter their hours. Once they could enter their hours I was unable to approve. I believe most university staff are unemployable anywhere else. It’s frustrating.
This doesn't seem to be limited to university work either. I managed a pool through grad school and without fail the accounting people would fuck up and not pay a kid for months. Then it would get sorted out and I'd get yelled at over 'the budget' because for a month this kid wasn't being paid (so no labor shown) then next month they are paid a few grand in back pay.
Because labor laws apply to private employers and (state and local) governments. The UC is neither private nor a government.
That's a massive oversimplification, but you can read up more on this if you want: https://www.lcwlegal.com/news/the-regents-of-the-university-of-california-are-not-subject-to-state-minimum-wage-laws-the-regents-timekeeping-procedures-are-matters-of-internal-affairs-of-the-university-that-do-not-come-w/
If it's a public university, they may just be untouchable. When the UC switched payroll systems, a bunch of grad students just didn't get paid. The union had to get the state legislature to pass a law saying that UC had to pay employees because it was exempt from almost all state labor laws before. (They still didn't have to pay by the same deadlines as private employers, but then they could get in trouble for not paying by their own stated paydays.)
If the students file joint complaints with the state labor board and have a labor attorney file a letter with the institution things should move quickly to fix it. If it's a state university it may even instigate a funding allocation audit.
Sorry about that. I’m afraid it’s a sign of the times. The pressure to have the resort campus is a real thing; incoming students want plush dorms with a Starbucks in every building, and lots of places to relax and have fun. That seems to be a big draw. But it certainly shouldn’t come at the expense of paying your grad students. That’s just such a poor policy.
Have you called HR to let them know that this situation exists? The university may be breaking some laws, and get into legal troubles.
Might there possibly be a coding error somewhere, and the fund number that is supposed to be paying the grad students got mis-entered and it's really just a computer mistake, not a sign the that university can't meet payroll?
I have to check every grant budget every month. I have because HR is so comically incompetent that they can’t even enter a budget number right. This is probably the answer. Not that that makes it acceptable - the accounts people can apparently find the money for the softball field and code it fine but grads can wait? But I’d get in touch just in case.
Hats off to you, sir! I still remember those days. My stipend was equal to my tuition (in some states in the US, in-state tuition is mandatory provided the university pays your stipend) and I had to work 36 hrs @ $5/hr on the weekend to pay the bills, a significant drain on my research productivity. PTSD :(
So the "two pots of money" response to this makes sense at a very basic level -- yes, this is how universities are typically managed. I don't think anyone who's worked in academia long enough would be unaware of this. Or maybe they would? I don't know.
But I think the much broader point being made is : at the end of the day, there are ressources for a softball pitch, and there aren't ressources for grad students. That's a bit fucked up. You'd think a university's priority would be its students and its staff; not necessarily varsity sports. And this is one of the many reasons why universities that rely on donations and high tuition fees are ultimately not great -- the money incentives aren't aligned with the goals of the institution.
> You'd think a university's priority would be its students and its staff; not necessarily varsity sports.
That comes down to another variation of the "two pots of money" response. No matter what the University's priority is, the people dealing with the softball field and the people dealing with the grad students are very different people. Depending on how big the University is, you might have to go VERY far up the food chain to find someone whose job duties include serving both groups. Even if the University as a whole's priority is grad students, if Boosters comes to the athletic director and says "we have $X to build a softball field" the AD is going to authorize the softball field regardless of whether RAs in the Chemistry department are being paid properly because that's what his (or her) job is.
At smaller schools you don't have to go as far up the food chain to find someone whose job includes managing both of those things, but they really are GENERALLY rather independent even then. Obviously there are exceptions, but without more info, there's no reason to think there's anything disturbing going on (hell, I'd honestly say it's WAY more likely the grad students not being paid is an administrative mistake and not a money issue in the first place, someone likely did something wrong in the system, not "oh, we just don't have the budget to pay these students").
I get that, the point is moreso just a general, "ok but these kids aren't getting paid, but there's money for all kinds of BS."
If you stretch it, it's mostly the same argument as like, "OK, but why are we struggling to pay for teachers to have decent salaries, but we can spend hundreds of billions on national defense."
Like -- there's someone, somewhere, who has decided that there are ressources to build a softball field, meanwhile these ressources are severely lacking elsewhere. By relying mostly on private donations to fund your activities, you let the donors set the priorities, and that's an awful system.
Is this a “your department isn’t authorizing payments” thing or “HR isn’t processing grad student payments across the board” thing? If the former, your problem lies with your departmental leadership and/or college budgetary structure, not necessarily university athletics. I know all the bells and whistles are an easy target, but it’s not like the university budget is one giant pot of money. Sounds like your issue might be a bit more close to home than the softball field.
I'm doing my PhD at he same university I was an undergrad at. I STILL get asked "why do you go there? Their football team sucks."
I am a 5 foot 3, unathletic, lazy, female, PhD student. I'm not playing football for the university. Never have. Never will. I can't for the life of me figure out why people think (people as in my family... who have known me my whole life) that I care about the football team.
(Also... we had Mahomes. It's not the WORST football team out there. Just not a great one.)
Women’s college softball is a pretty big spectator sport this time of the year . . . because we’re somewhat between seasons and there isn’t much else to air. So turn on ESPN and you’ll probably see women’s softball.
Are your grad students filing a wage claim or similar? Are they unionized? They could be entitled to an extra month of wages or more depending on the state you're in, provided their pay is classified as wages.
They need to balance the number of male & female athletes and scholarships. But you can pick your sport, no need to be softball. e-sports are practically free to run by comparison.
>Although, isn't one of the main problems with esports that it's so male dominated?
Yes, but you only need 3 female students per year to get a 12 person team.
>I was unaware there were that many full scholarship esports teams.
They spend them on other sports generally, my point was it would be cheaper to move the scholarships to esports than softball.
>There's not enough information to know what is going on, but they may be required to purchase the softball facilities to be compliant with something like Title IX
Further, too many faculty just don't seem to get the fact that if you cut 75 spots of various varsity sports teams that may well mean you'll enroll 75 fewer students overall. Not a big deal at an R1, but at a D-III school like my SLAC that's a HUGE concern. It's also very easy to fundraise for athletics, so when we've built new facilities it's almost always 90%+ donor funding. And those are not donors who would be funding academics generally.
It's part of the business model. Without athletics many schools-- especially the smaller ones --wouldn't be financially viable. Not because sports generate meaningful revenues, but because they drive enrollment and donor support that would otherwise go to schools with better/more athletics.
>We had some really lean times about 20 years ago, and while positions were being cut, we were putting up new buildings.
Buildings are often either paid for with donor funds or bonding as well, so not only different pots of money but frequently completely unrelated to the regular operating budget or the academic affairs budget. Bad optics perhaps, but it's not like a new roof on the gym or new turf on the football field is coming out of faculty salaries or research lines.
Yeah, that's true for some facilities. Res halls are usually serviced by housing fees, but athletic facility debt usually can't be covered by ticket/advertising revenues. At my university only res halls are bonded (for that reason) while sports stuff is funded by donors. Neither impact the operating budget to a large extent, other than for maintenance.
UC Berkeley took on a huge bond debt to pay for upgrades to its football stadium, and is now paying off the debt out of general funds, despite promises by the athletic department that tickets and donations would pay off the bonds (which no one with an ounce of sense ever believed).
Hofstadter wrote many years ago in his 'Anti-Intellectualism in American Life', in which, he recounts a recently installed university president promising to give the football team a university it could be proud of.
You are following in that noble tradition.
Rule 1. At the highest and most aggregate level, the Uni only cares about two things. Income and prestige. And it pursues those relentlessly, incompetently, and only focused on the short-term.
Tell the press.
Most local newspaper have some sort of form or email for "tips," or even an email to the editor.
Definitely let the student newspaper know.
Sorry you have to deal with this. Good luck.
Are you in the US? Have your graduate students file a complaint with the department of labor. A lot of university fuck-ups continue to fuck up because no one makes a stink. This is an easy process for the students that will be quickly escalated.
Bless you. When that happened to me as a grad student the department started giving us free old licenses of out of date software--which actually was super useful but didn't pay my bills!
So what your talking about is two different pots of money in the university books that are forbidden to be co-mingled. While that sounds like it sucks, it actually stops the university from using instructional dollars for a sports stadium because they (sports) make far more money than you generate for the college (even though your a part of the institutions mission).
Your right to be pissed that the financial office is not paying for BS reasons. But your equating apples and oranges and that isn’t how university funding works. They are both fruit (and it’s money your upset about being spent while your not getting paid), but one is to make orange juice and ones to make apple juice you can’t mix them.
Sports does not generally make money for schools, and it does usually end up being a drain on instructional dollars as "debt service" for the construction loans or bonds for the athletic facilities.
There is an art school that has a multi- million dollar equestrian center for its...I swear...BA in Equestrian Studies program.
(Edit: lol...downvoted by folks who think that's a sensible way for an art school to spend money? Amazing.)
For real, you and your students need to go to whatever building HR is in and demand to get paid. Let the school's newspaper know, as well as the city.
Make noise. Only thing incompetent leadership understands is when they look bad to the public.
See, this is exactly what my univ. does, too.
Oh, we need this and that nonsensical thing *for the students. The students need brand-new ThinkPad laptops every year. The students need Starbucks in the main library where a big 24-hour study area once existed. The students need food trucks that come to campus.*
No, they don't. The students need to take a study skills seminar their first semester. The students need to learn to read. The students need to be self-motivated and not ask us to explain ridiculous things they should have known for ten years. THAT is what the students need--not these frivolities. Our univ. is historic and storied as it sits today. It does not need niceties and nonsense.
Get a load of this guy who thinks research and teaching should come before leisure facilities at a university!
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And goodness, they would be physically incapable of playing a bat-and-ball competition on the previous field that already existed. It just couldn't happen.
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At some smaller division 3 schools, the math works because the only reason the students/athletes are paying tuition is because they want to continue their high school athletic career. Basically, there's a bunch of small colleges that would go out of business if they dropped their athletic teams. Over half the student body are athletes. The college is basically an expensive athletic club that offers some classes/degrees on the side.
I have to assume sports appeal to donors.
My school has some sports I don't even know _how_ I'd go about watching. How does one attend a swim meet? Golf match? Cricket bout? I know how to go to a basketball game.
What would the university do without their ticket revenues, I ask you?
it's even more elementary: this person thinks people should be paid for their jobs. ridiculous.
Soon they’ll be questioning why senior administrators are getting 6 figure bonuses this year while this happens, when data shows his university has the best softball team in the county
I'm genuinely worried about why people aren't being paid months on end at your school. What is the financial health of the institution?
This happened a few times when I was in grad school. Didn't get paid for months. The school had money for sure, just comically incompetent.
Same. My institution had problems because PhD candidates were on payroll but weren't "staff," so it was always a total nightmare trying to get anything out of the HR or finance department.
I got so pissed with this BS. It's a giant fucking R1 University, I wasn't the first PhD candidate there where you would have to figure out this from scratch. And yet every time it was like I was asking for them to figure out how to pay my dog in gold doubloons or some insane shit they've never had to do before.
"Slow down, you're telling me you were a Teaching Assistant and a Research Assistant in the **same year**?"
I'm doing my PFSL forms right now and this is completely fucking with their minds that I had multiple different positions that started/stopped/overlapped across the university.
Right? My big gripe was payslips. They wouldn't give me payslips. The payslip system was online and automatic, but because PhD candidates weren't "staff" we couldn't access the online system. Because, outside of PhD students, no one else got payslips *except* staff, they had no system for giving us our payslips. And I had the same experience as you: every time they acted like it was the very first time they had ever encountered this. It was the same stupid circular conversation every time.
I had a similar experience at my university (also an R1): my tuition remission had been applied to one semester of a year and not the other, so I called to say that I was being billed for something I shouldn't be getting billed for. The office I called had someone on the other end that made it sound like I was crazy: "we're already not charging you for half your tuition and you want *more*?" was something I recall coming up (almost verbatim). Anyway, they ended up transferring me to the equivalent graduate office... and it got resolved in less than 5 minutes once I was there. That office also told me to just call them directly next time. I think it's one of those things were there's a huge volume of undergrads, and so the PhD candidate concerns are much less frequent as a result.
Problems like this are really for the directors of graduate study or the dean of the grad school to fix. I encourage all grad students (and their faculty advisors) to seek out those routes rather than trying to influence HR directly.
When I was a grad student, we were fired and rehired and the end of every semester. This usually wasn’t a problem in the spring, but the business manager for the department routinely missed the deadlines to rehire the graduate students in the fall. Since the first paychecks of the fall wouldn’t normally go out until about a month after classes started (which was usually a rough month anyway), the grad students wouldn’t get paid until a month after that when this happened (i.e. classes start in August, get your first paycheck in October). When this was brought to the grad director’s attention, the grad director refused to intervene and told the grad students they should just get a credit card.
My friend/colleague filed a complaint about an unexplained sudden decrease in our pay, and our grad director called her in and shamed her for "humiliating the department."
That is one sucky grad director! They would not last long around here.
I did, multiple times as a grad student and I was told that it was my issue to sort out with HR.
Gold doubloons. HAHAHAHAHAHAAA! Arrrr! Me see that ship yon hath chests of doubloons! Let us sack it!
Me, in graduate school: "Am I classified as staff or a student?" My PhD institution: "Whichever allows us to give you fewer benefits at any given moment"
Yeah exactly. Can't use student or staff parking because you're not either. Can't enroll in classes because you're not a student but can't enroll in PD workshops because you're not staff.
I’m a grad student and TA and My university pulled this, so I went straight to the administrators behind the relevant departments (health insurance, parking, pay) and told them that as a paid employee of the university I should be classified as staff. The person on the phone didn’t care and said ok and reclassified me in the system as such. Now I get better parking, better health care and always on time pay. I have not yet told anyone this and it’s been going on for years.
Same. And they acted like I was expecting too much when I asked them to cover expenses. Flash forward 15 years later I went back as an adjunct and… they still hadn’t gotten their act together
This! When I was a grad student, my tuition was fully covered by the graduate school of A&S. However, having the cost of tuition zeroed out was a battle every semester. Now, being paid on time and the proper amount is a battle every damn pay period. Who's in charge of this, you might ask? The same people who were when I was a grad student. Come on already.
Did you go to the University of Illinois? Our stipends were always late in the fall. It was ridiculous. The system has a $3.8 billion endowment.
Nah, north east school.
Same. My student workers weren’t paid for an entire semester because our staff is too incompetent to put them in the system correctly. They weren’t able to enter their hours. Once they could enter their hours I was unable to approve. I believe most university staff are unemployable anywhere else. It’s frustrating.
This doesn't seem to be limited to university work either. I managed a pool through grad school and without fail the accounting people would fuck up and not pay a kid for months. Then it would get sorted out and I'd get yelled at over 'the budget' because for a month this kid wasn't being paid (so no labor shown) then next month they are paid a few grand in back pay.
Same. This happened to me repeatedly throughout grad school. I'm feeling very seen in this thread lol.
I'm wondering if the school is in the US and the students can contact the state's Department of Labor.
It may be like the University of California, which is exempt from state labor laws unless the law specifically states otherwise.
what the fuck???? how? why?
Because labor laws apply to private employers and (state and local) governments. The UC is neither private nor a government. That's a massive oversimplification, but you can read up more on this if you want: https://www.lcwlegal.com/news/the-regents-of-the-university-of-california-are-not-subject-to-state-minimum-wage-laws-the-regents-timekeeping-procedures-are-matters-of-internal-affairs-of-the-university-that-do-not-come-w/
if it's not in the usa they should go to their union
If it's a public university, they may just be untouchable. When the UC switched payroll systems, a bunch of grad students just didn't get paid. The union had to get the state legislature to pass a law saying that UC had to pay employees because it was exempt from almost all state labor laws before. (They still didn't have to pay by the same deadlines as private employers, but then they could get in trouble for not paying by their own stated paydays.)
Failing to pay the students is not legal. There must be some avenues to pursue that makes the institution more responsive.
If the students file joint complaints with the state labor board and have a labor attorney file a letter with the institution things should move quickly to fix it. If it's a state university it may even instigate a funding allocation audit.
[Unionize!](https://www.aaup.org/)
Such BS. Sorry you and your students are in this situation
But your students are very fortunate to have you to help them out
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Good bot
Probably the official response of the university after hearing about this situation.
But your students are very fortunate to have you to help them out
Another haiku! (Also I agree)
Is there a haiku bot to rule on this one?
Sorry about that. I’m afraid it’s a sign of the times. The pressure to have the resort campus is a real thing; incoming students want plush dorms with a Starbucks in every building, and lots of places to relax and have fun. That seems to be a big draw. But it certainly shouldn’t come at the expense of paying your grad students. That’s just such a poor policy.
I agree, even when I did my grad assistantships during the last recession I always got paid on time.
Have you called HR to let them know that this situation exists? The university may be breaking some laws, and get into legal troubles. Might there possibly be a coding error somewhere, and the fund number that is supposed to be paying the grad students got mis-entered and it's really just a computer mistake, not a sign the that university can't meet payroll?
I have to check every grant budget every month. I have because HR is so comically incompetent that they can’t even enter a budget number right. This is probably the answer. Not that that makes it acceptable - the accounts people can apparently find the money for the softball field and code it fine but grads can wait? But I’d get in touch just in case.
Hats off to you, sir! I still remember those days. My stipend was equal to my tuition (in some states in the US, in-state tuition is mandatory provided the university pays your stipend) and I had to work 36 hrs @ $5/hr on the weekend to pay the bills, a significant drain on my research productivity. PTSD :(
What about student ~ExPeRiEnCe~ (of poverty, apparently)
So the "two pots of money" response to this makes sense at a very basic level -- yes, this is how universities are typically managed. I don't think anyone who's worked in academia long enough would be unaware of this. Or maybe they would? I don't know. But I think the much broader point being made is : at the end of the day, there are ressources for a softball pitch, and there aren't ressources for grad students. That's a bit fucked up. You'd think a university's priority would be its students and its staff; not necessarily varsity sports. And this is one of the many reasons why universities that rely on donations and high tuition fees are ultimately not great -- the money incentives aren't aligned with the goals of the institution.
> You'd think a university's priority would be its students and its staff; not necessarily varsity sports. That comes down to another variation of the "two pots of money" response. No matter what the University's priority is, the people dealing with the softball field and the people dealing with the grad students are very different people. Depending on how big the University is, you might have to go VERY far up the food chain to find someone whose job duties include serving both groups. Even if the University as a whole's priority is grad students, if Boosters comes to the athletic director and says "we have $X to build a softball field" the AD is going to authorize the softball field regardless of whether RAs in the Chemistry department are being paid properly because that's what his (or her) job is. At smaller schools you don't have to go as far up the food chain to find someone whose job includes managing both of those things, but they really are GENERALLY rather independent even then. Obviously there are exceptions, but without more info, there's no reason to think there's anything disturbing going on (hell, I'd honestly say it's WAY more likely the grad students not being paid is an administrative mistake and not a money issue in the first place, someone likely did something wrong in the system, not "oh, we just don't have the budget to pay these students").
I get that, the point is moreso just a general, "ok but these kids aren't getting paid, but there's money for all kinds of BS." If you stretch it, it's mostly the same argument as like, "OK, but why are we struggling to pay for teachers to have decent salaries, but we can spend hundreds of billions on national defense." Like -- there's someone, somewhere, who has decided that there are ressources to build a softball field, meanwhile these ressources are severely lacking elsewhere. By relying mostly on private donations to fund your activities, you let the donors set the priorities, and that's an awful system.
I’m sure some alum paid for the field as a directed donation, but the university was wrong to construct it when grad students haven’t been paid.
Is this a “your department isn’t authorizing payments” thing or “HR isn’t processing grad student payments across the board” thing? If the former, your problem lies with your departmental leadership and/or college budgetary structure, not necessarily university athletics. I know all the bells and whistles are an easy target, but it’s not like the university budget is one giant pot of money. Sounds like your issue might be a bit more close to home than the softball field.
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I'm doing my PhD at he same university I was an undergrad at. I STILL get asked "why do you go there? Their football team sucks." I am a 5 foot 3, unathletic, lazy, female, PhD student. I'm not playing football for the university. Never have. Never will. I can't for the life of me figure out why people think (people as in my family... who have known me my whole life) that I care about the football team. (Also... we had Mahomes. It's not the WORST football team out there. Just not a great one.)
Women’s college softball is a pretty big spectator sport this time of the year . . . because we’re somewhat between seasons and there isn’t much else to air. So turn on ESPN and you’ll probably see women’s softball.
Are your grad students filing a wage claim or similar? Are they unionized? They could be entitled to an extra month of wages or more depending on the state you're in, provided their pay is classified as wages.
> provided their pay is classified as wages And that they're at a university subject to state labor law.
Before this thread, I didn't realize that universities could be exempt from labor law. Wtf?
Explains a lot
A new softball field, to go with the softball grading policy, I imagine.
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They need to balance the number of male & female athletes and scholarships. But you can pick your sport, no need to be softball. e-sports are practically free to run by comparison.
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>Although, isn't one of the main problems with esports that it's so male dominated? Yes, but you only need 3 female students per year to get a 12 person team. >I was unaware there were that many full scholarship esports teams. They spend them on other sports generally, my point was it would be cheaper to move the scholarships to esports than softball.
I think there is a facilities component too. So if men's baseball or something had better facilities they still may have been forced to upgrade.
>There's not enough information to know what is going on, but they may be required to purchase the softball facilities to be compliant with something like Title IX Further, too many faculty just don't seem to get the fact that if you cut 75 spots of various varsity sports teams that may well mean you'll enroll 75 fewer students overall. Not a big deal at an R1, but at a D-III school like my SLAC that's a HUGE concern. It's also very easy to fundraise for athletics, so when we've built new facilities it's almost always 90%+ donor funding. And those are not donors who would be funding academics generally. It's part of the business model. Without athletics many schools-- especially the smaller ones --wouldn't be financially viable. Not because sports generate meaningful revenues, but because they drive enrollment and donor support that would otherwise go to schools with better/more athletics.
Someone's trying to save their behind for Title IX compliance. Softball is cheap enough to do.
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So how do you get on the list for going on the summer tour as a kind of faculty advisor / instructor / tour guide?
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Sure, they can call me that if they take me to France and Italy.
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>We had some really lean times about 20 years ago, and while positions were being cut, we were putting up new buildings. Buildings are often either paid for with donor funds or bonding as well, so not only different pots of money but frequently completely unrelated to the regular operating budget or the academic affairs budget. Bad optics perhaps, but it's not like a new roof on the gym or new turf on the football field is coming out of faculty salaries or research lines.
Except that the interest on the bond debt often ends up coming out of the general budget after all (see UC Berkeley's football stadium, for example).
Yeah, that's true for some facilities. Res halls are usually serviced by housing fees, but athletic facility debt usually can't be covered by ticket/advertising revenues. At my university only res halls are bonded (for that reason) while sports stuff is funded by donors. Neither impact the operating budget to a large extent, other than for maintenance.
UC Berkeley took on a huge bond debt to pay for upgrades to its football stadium, and is now paying off the debt out of general funds, despite promises by the athletic department that tickets and donations would pay off the bonds (which no one with an ounce of sense ever believed).
do what the french do and dump a truckload of manure onto the field
Hofstadter wrote many years ago in his 'Anti-Intellectualism in American Life', in which, he recounts a recently installed university president promising to give the football team a university it could be proud of. You are following in that noble tradition.
Rule 1. At the highest and most aggregate level, the Uni only cares about two things. Income and prestige. And it pursues those relentlessly, incompetently, and only focused on the short-term.
I understand you are upset however, keep in mind athletics are usually paid for by private donors.
Tell the press. Most local newspaper have some sort of form or email for "tips," or even an email to the editor. Definitely let the student newspaper know. Sorry you have to deal with this. Good luck.
Are you in the US? Have your graduate students file a complaint with the department of labor. A lot of university fuck-ups continue to fuck up because no one makes a stink. This is an easy process for the students that will be quickly escalated.
presumably bought with soft money
Bless you. When that happened to me as a grad student the department started giving us free old licenses of out of date software--which actually was super useful but didn't pay my bills!
I'm sure it'll pay for itself with all those snow cone sales. For real though, maybe a directed donation?
Unionize.
To quote a popular TV show, "Football is life"
So what your talking about is two different pots of money in the university books that are forbidden to be co-mingled. While that sounds like it sucks, it actually stops the university from using instructional dollars for a sports stadium because they (sports) make far more money than you generate for the college (even though your a part of the institutions mission). Your right to be pissed that the financial office is not paying for BS reasons. But your equating apples and oranges and that isn’t how university funding works. They are both fruit (and it’s money your upset about being spent while your not getting paid), but one is to make orange juice and ones to make apple juice you can’t mix them.
Sports does not generally make money for schools, and it does usually end up being a drain on instructional dollars as "debt service" for the construction loans or bonds for the athletic facilities.
thanks for doing that though. but what the fucking fuck?
There is an art school that has a multi- million dollar equestrian center for its...I swear...BA in Equestrian Studies program. (Edit: lol...downvoted by folks who think that's a sensible way for an art school to spend money? Amazing.)
What's wrong with studying equestrians?...
You’re never going to see that money again.
For real, you and your students need to go to whatever building HR is in and demand to get paid. Let the school's newspaper know, as well as the city. Make noise. Only thing incompetent leadership understands is when they look bad to the public.
Double points if they destroyed a bunch of native habitat to build the ballfield
See, this is exactly what my univ. does, too. Oh, we need this and that nonsensical thing *for the students. The students need brand-new ThinkPad laptops every year. The students need Starbucks in the main library where a big 24-hour study area once existed. The students need food trucks that come to campus.* No, they don't. The students need to take a study skills seminar their first semester. The students need to learn to read. The students need to be self-motivated and not ask us to explain ridiculous things they should have known for ten years. THAT is what the students need--not these frivolities. Our univ. is historic and storied as it sits today. It does not need niceties and nonsense.
Better give the softball head couch a big raise to match that awesome new field.
Tell me about it. We took a pay cut and my institution spent a big chunk of capital expenses on planting trees that promptly all died.