Last week the University Senate passed a motion to ask the athletic department to share its profits with the academic side of the University. The motion is in no way binding, and with uncertainty surrounding both the plans to build a new arena and the economy in general, the outcome is far from a sure thing.
Nevertheless, given the social and civic purposes of a university, we support this sort of co-funding model. It is too easy for a university to become and remain a house divided between athletics and academics. Often, the stereotypical incompatibilities between ‘jocks’ and ‘nerds’ become more than just banter, especially when the differences become measured in budgets, salaries, and campus infrastructure.
The rivalry manifests itself in arguments over who deserves what because of the two sides’ respective contributions to the University’s reputation and prestige. The two sides also butt heads over funding, whether from tuition, the state, private donations, or, in a category where academics falls far behind athletics – ticket sales.
In this regard, when justifying who deserves what and why, we have to ask: Is the essence of a university, of this University, centered around its academic departments or around the Ducks? The answer should be both.
This institution is more than the sum of its parts. Without the athletic department and programs such as track and field, basketball, and football, the University would not have nearly the national and international recognition that it enjoys. Its outstanding contributions to research and education likely would be largely unknown outside Oregon’s borders, and many people would probably think of it as the college from “Animal House.”
Conversely, without a comfortable academic home in which to cohabitate, a nest built and maintained in a large part by the state’s coffer, the Ducks could be a civic league or a franchise club of various sports, but hardly the sort of organization that would have games shown live on cable, or the reputation to become the seat for the U.S. Olympic Trials in track and field, or be able to move with the force of Nike’s right arm.
The truth is that the University is both its academics and its athletics. Each already depends upon the other to have developed into what it is, and each one benefits from the other’s contribution to the overall identity of what the University of Oregon is. It is a symbiotic relationship, and for rivalries of importance to come before the importance of the relationship itself and it benefit to our community, is to undermine the overall organization.
Some will argue that athletics should be able to keep all of its profits because that department earned the cash. Others will say that if athletics begins to more overtly fund academic departments, it may want to have more say in governing the institution. Or perhaps if the athletic department overruns its budget, it will ask for academics to send funds back to athletics.
While all of these arguments against a co-funding model have some merit, they all attempt to portray the University as two separate entities, as two suspicious and untrusting partners in one small campus. In reality, we exist as one University, on one campus, with one reputation, all of which have been built and maintained by athletics and academic departments together. A co-funding model as supported by the Senate will help the University see its true unified self and will further benefit the successful cooperative effort that goes back more than 100 years.