December 29, 2004

Note from Peter Livingstone-McNelis, BBT President

December 18, 2004

Gazette Viewpoint of December 16, 2004 - Peter Livingstone-McNelis
[Note: This is the revised viewpoint article that was not printed--despite the Kalamazoo Gazette staff asking me to make the revision to account for the firing of WMU's football coach, Gary Darnell. The first three paragraphs of the revised article are almost identical to the original submission but the last seven paragraphs are radically different. At the time of the printing, I was under the impression that the revision was going to be printed. It was never disclosed to me why the revised version was not printed but I believe that the Gazette editorial staff were concerned about length and content, even though supportive documentation was offered. Either way, I am appreciative of the Kalamazoo Gazette's willingness to print my essay even though I believe the revised version is more poignant.]

Western Michigan University President Judith Bailey recently set forth an ambitious agenda in her most recent State of the University address. Unfortunately, this agenda is necessary given the number of egregious decisions this administration has made and are likely to make over the coming years.

First of all, it should not come to anyone's surprise that Western's enrollment dropped over 1300 students over the past year. If you have been following the news, Western bypassed Governor Jennifer Granholm's initiative to cap tuition at 2.4% by raising fees so that the actual cost to students far exceeded 2.4%. Initially, this administration vigorously denied that their fee structure in any way skirted the legislature's intention to limit the spiraling cost of attending the public university. Only after the Michigan legislature threatened to withhold $3.3 million in aid did Western officials state that they will refund $1.6 million to the students.

In the meantime, Western continues to hold on to the $1.6 million in fees that the State of Michigan feels they overcharged students and have said publicly that they will not return the money to the students until the State of Michigan gives them $3.3 million in aid. It is therefore, not surprising that Kalamazoo Valley Community College--which capped their tuition below 2.4% and did not impose any additional fees-saw a corresponding increase in enrollment of approximately 1300 students.

On the other hand, students may have chosen either not to enroll or to transfer from Western due to the adminsitration's handling of several other issues such as: the firing of 60 union custodial workers without notice behind a backdrop of campus police: the reduction of library hours on the weekends at what is supposed to be a research university and doing so without properly informing the student body; the adoption of "moderate dinginess" to "unkempt neglect" as the new custodial standard after having laid off the union custodial workers; the naming of Phillip Morris Tobacco Company as the Employer of the Year; the elimination of two of the most successful sports programs (men's track and women's synchronized skating) that involved 22% of the student body athletes in order to save 5% of the athletic department budget; and the on and off again announcement of plans to build a Welcome Center while first defending the costs by explaining it as an auxilliary fund or self-funding project only to announce the cancellation of the project two weeks later because the administration said there were not enough funds. The handling of these issues by this administration has rightfully generated a tremendous amount of negative publicity for WMU--and it all happened under President Bailey's watch in less than one year.

Upon a review of a speech President Bailey gave in February a few weeks after her first State of the University address entitled, University Ethics in the 21st Century," she stated that the University has "the moral obligation to manage resources well, be transparent about funding--where it comes from and how it is used--and be forthright about the cost of higher education." Sadly, this is the same president that emerged from a closed door presidential search process who have been accused on several occasions of acting on decisions made from secret board meetings and who formed a secret panel entitled, "The Academic Affairs Budget Advisory Committee," to consider millions in cuts proposed in the academic arena.

She is also the same president who set forth a plan to promote diversity on campus shortly after she made the decision to cut the storied men's track program which had ten times the percentage of minority students than the general student population. Keep in mind that last year when cuts were made to the men's track program--which had several African-American males on the team--only 1.65% of the student population at WMU were African-American men.

Moreover, President Bailey, went on record saying that, with regard to the cuts made to the sports programs, for every athlete that leaves Western, it had 50 students on the waiting list. Given this scenario, Western should have at least 300 additional students (versus 1300 fewer). Now Western is planning on spending more money by hiring another administrator that will have the title of Vice-Provost of Enrollment Management to help boost enrollment in order to offset the loss of revenue created by this sudden drop in enrollment. Isn't that what the director of admissions is supposed to do?

But alas, the poor decision-making does not end there. Western chose to go $8.5 million over budget in building the Seeyle Center without even having an indoor track to show for it because the administration felt that it was more important that the planned ceiling height be raised so that not only field goals could be kicked within the center but that punts could be made as well. This simple decision to raise the ceiling height required the construction of the building to be that much wider, which added $18.5 million to the cost and meant that the planned funds to build the long-promised indoor track facility would have to be spent to pay for this change.

If this decision was not insulting enough to the track community, WMU administrators had the gall to go back to track supporters and again ask for help in raising anothe $10 million to build a state-of -the-art indoor track facility as they cleverly marketed it to be part of "Phase II" construction of the Seeyle Center as if "Phase I" wasn't supposed to include a track. Moreover, many of those individuals and businesses who donated to WMU under the premise that their donation would go towards the building of an indoor track facility in Phase I and later the Phase II construction of the Seeyle Center, now believe that WMU will never follow through with their commitment to build an indoor track facility since this the same administration that also cut the men's track program.

Even more troubling is the fact that Western probably never would have cut the men's track program if it had made the promised investment in a new state-of-the-art indoor track facility in the first place.

Keep in mind the decision to not build the indoor track hurt more than just the track program but all Western sports teams which would have used the track for conditioning. Furthermore, it is important to remember that the Seeyle Center was not originally intended to be a "football palace" as some people now refer to it but an indoor training facility for twelve sports teams and a resource for the community to rent for AYSO Soccer Tournaments, conferences, track meets, etc.

Nonetheless, the decision to change the plans once the funds were raised also led to further consequences because in order to pay for $8.5 million deficit the university was forced to spend reserve funds that were supposed to go towards equipment and operational expenses. The end result was that when the Seeyle was completed there were not sufficient funds to open the building up to the public or the funds to let other teams outside the football program use the facility. The problem got so bad that Western turned off the heat to the Seeyle Center to save costs but forgot to turn it on when some football recruits came to visit the facilities with their families, forcing them to shiver while they ate a catered meal and later toured what was then literally a shell of a facility without furniture or equipment.

Now this administration has decided to invest even more money into the football program by buying off Coach Darnell's contract to the tune of $100,000 at a time when they say they have no money but spent millions of dollars foolishly already on the program. Sadly, that same $100,000 could have been used to bring back a competitive Division I Men's Cross Country Program. Of course, Western has no guarantee for their $100,000 that the next coach will do any better than Coach Darnell did or would have done if he had stayed.

Keep in mind Coach Darnell took over the program that was 2-9, and went 8-3 in his first year. Additionally, many of the sports magazines declared Western's incoming football recruiting class to be the best in the Mid-American Conference. So why waste $100,000 and put the university in a position of perhaps having to pay the next coach even more or having to make additional promises to make the position attractive. Quite simply, Western has already sunk too much money into its football program and as a result caused the rest of its sports teams to suffer.

Nonetheless, it does not seem to make any difference whether or not Western has a realistic chance of winning the Mid-American Conference Football Championship--something this program has only done once in one-hundred years: this administration seems determined to keep throwing money at the program because they have a pipe dream that Western will not only win the Mid-American Conference but get to a bowl game and win all that money back.

This mentality is similar to someone who has a gambling addiction. The odds of winning are definitely against them but still the gambler feels that they can't return home until they recoup all their money. Unfortunately, the gambler can't hear information that goes against what they are thinking.

A few weeks ago, I met with President Judith Bailey and Kathy Beauregard, Athletic Director, for about an hour and shared with them two recent articles in the NCAA Newsletter. The first article was by Myles Brand, President of the NCAA, who wrote that "in Division I-A, there are, at most, two or three dozen institutions at which revenues from athletics match or exceed athletics spending, even with annual distributions from local and national television contracts." Later he goes on to say that, "it is the misperception to think that by investing more and more in college sports, institutions reach the point of breaking even. The axiom that you have to spend money to make money has been elusive for most athletic programs and ruinous for some."

This is borne out by the fact that during the 2000-01 school year, the so-called revenue generating sports at Bowling Green--football and men's basketball---combined for a loss of more than $1.9 million, despite Bowling Green's football team that year being ranked in the top 25 in the nation.

The second article discussed findings from the Knight Commission which "reviewed existing research conducted between 1981-2003, including a baseline economic study the NCAA commissioned two years ago, that explored the links between athletic success and student applications and fund-raising." The study concluded that "athletic success does not meaningfully increase either the amount of alumni donations nor the quality of student applicants."

Incidentally, President Bailey and Kathy Beauregard said they were were well-aware of this information yet they continue to run what Myles Brand describes as an arm's race in a misguided attempt (and failing attempt at that) to produce winning football programs at all costs. In Western's case, that meant cutting four winning sports teams that also happened to be only teams that made money for the university, during a budget crisis, and to support football, a so-called revenue sport, which will likely lose close to $2 million this year--or four times the cost of bringing these four sports back!

Despite the fact that these so-called non-revenue teams don't collect substantial gate receipts and get television contracts, they actually made more money for the university because they not only had much smaller budgets but had a much higher percentage of athletes paying tuition (synchronized skating offered no athletic scholarships for 52 athletes while at the same time 66% of the team were non-Michigan residents who paid out-of-state tuition rates, while the men's track program only had 10 full-athletic scholarships for 48 athletes as opposed to the football team that provides 85 full-athletic scholarships for a little over a 100 athletes on the team.

And yet we hear in President Bailey's latest State of the University address that Western has no money--but is planning on doing bigger and better things by of course spending judiciously and attracting more students to their fine institution. How about starting with reinstating the men's track and synchronized skating programs? Who knows--if you had a men's track program again and you hired football coaches that actively recruited football/track athletes and encouraged these athletes to participate in track, maybe the football team would get faster and stronger athletes to come to Western. One would think that additional speed and strength might make a difference to the success of the football team!

This of course makes sense, but it's more likely that the athletic department and this administration won't listen and will simply continue to suffer the consequences of their knee-jerk decision-making and questionable business practices that will likely result in millions and millions of more dollars lost.

Peter Livingstone-McNelis,
Bring Back Track, President

December 17, 2004

Bring Back Track Apparel as Christmas Gifts! Our BBT and SOS caps are sure to be collector items. You can purchase them at the Spirit Shoppe for $10. Handouts are also available at the Spirit Shoppe which is located next the Campus Kitchen off of Howard also across from Campus Pointe Mall.

December 13, 2004

Cuts mourned University's track, cross-country teams vanish; synchronized skaters soldier on as club sport - Kalamazoo Gazette, Monday, December 13, 2004 - John Liberty

http://www.mlive.com/search/index.ssf?/base/news-12/1102954829308310.xml?kzgazette?NEKP

December 9, 2004

The following editorial was published in the Battle Enquirer on December 7, 2004:

Link to Article

The article is also reproduced below.

WMU leadership's decisions criticized
Western Michigan University President Judith Bailey recently set forth an ambitious agenda in her most recent State of the University address. Unfortunately, this agenda is necessary given the number of egregious decisions this administration has made, such as: the choice to bypass Gov. Granholm's initiative to cap tuition increases at 2.4 percent by raising fees and thereby overcharging students $1.6 million, according to the State of Michigan; the firing of 60 custodial workers without notice with a backdrop of campus police; the formation of a secret panel titled "The Academic Affairs Budget Advisory Committee," to consider millions in cuts; the reduction of library hours without properly informing the student body; the adoption of "moderate dinginess" as the new custodial standard; the naming of Phillip Morris as the Employer of the Year; the elimination of four sports comprising of 22 percent of the student body athletes to save 5 percent of the athletic department budget; and the decision to go $8.5 million over budget to build the Seelye Center without building the promised indoor track so that a football could be kicked higher.

And yet President Bailey stated in the speech she gave early in her presidency, titled "University Ethics in the 21st Century," that the University has "the moral obligation to manage resources well, be transparent about funding and be forthright about the cost of education." Because these principles were never adhered to, not only are the WMU faculty, staff and students suffering, but all of southwest Michigan is as well.

Peter Livingstone-McNelis,

President,
Bring Back Track
Kalamazoo

November 11, 2004