The majority of students are grateful for the opportunity to attend such a high-caliber school, and if your family is wealthy (the average University of Oregon student’s family income is $100,000 per year), then a quality education is implied. For underprivileged families, many are forced to find alternatives to education. The talented few can choose an athletic career but have to compete with recruits from around the country for limited scholarships to good schools. The ones who make it don’t have such a glamorous life: injuries, family situations, and academics all factor into their ability to remain in school and a spot on the team. The lucky ones use their talents to access education but don’t automatically get a degree. Many athletes would benefit from a strictly academic career considering the poor state of our nation’s public education system.
The problems that many black Americans have in accessing an education is frequently predicated on financial problems that becomes apparent in intercollegiate athletics. If you look at the make up of University’s athletes, the racial demographic compared with that of the total student population, you will see just how unequal things really are at our school. The black population, for example, composes 40 percent of the male student athletes, but added to the total male population of our school it is equal to less then .5 percent of the University population. To understand access to education, we have to begin looking at the fact of racial inequality at this flagship institution and the result of the athletic population inequality. Institutional racism and economic inequality are the causes of the disproportionate population in higher education. We desperately need to look for solutions. Financial assistance along with many other supplements can change the racial and class disparities at this school. The Athletic Department is not causing racism and economic inequality, but it is not advocating against it. By not actively working to fix these problems, the department is only facilitating the inequality by putting student athletes to work on the plantation fields.
The athletes themselves are forced to abide by separate rules from the rest of the students, which include limitations on actions, speech and dress. They get a different student academic support program, an additional student code of conduct and often sports schedules limit academic degree choices. More freedom to engage in the academic process would greatly benefit these athletes, and the athletic department needs to line up its mission statement more closely to the school’s. By continuing to limit athletes with more regulations, the department serves its own best interests and not those of the students.
Most students don’t realize that the Athletics Department’s tie to the school is entirely artificial, aside from the mascot and money. The University Athletics Department is a separate entity that has its own tax code, budget and operating staff. Our student fee accounts for a significant portion of the department’s yearly revenues, in ticket sales, and even building funds, but we have no access to the Moshofsky Sports Center that students paid for. This year, the Pacific-10 chose to add a football game to its schedule, which will put a game during finals week. Unlike other schools in the Pac-10, students at the University are being used to fund this conflict of academic interests.
If our Athletic Department really wanted to make a commitment to athletics, it would have never separated itself from the rest of the school. It sold out along time ago and became a multimillion dollar operation that offers nothing to further enhance the mission of this school. The student population needs to start looking at the Athletics Department critically, if we are to maintain the quality and equality of a higher education degree in the coming years.
Ty Schwoeffermann is a student at the University of Oregon
Athletics should offer more to higher education
Daily Emerald
February 20, 2007
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