The volatile relationship between faculty and the administration regarding athletics came to a head on Thursday when members of the Intercollegiate Athletic Committee met to air their concerns about the “communication problem,” between the administration and the committee.
The IAC, which serves as an advisory board to the Athletic Department, feels that the administration has too often informed them about major developments at the 11th hour, then reported to the larger faculty about how the committee has been consulted.
This gives the impression that the committee has given its approval even though many members in the group might disagree with the decision, IAC chairwoman Anita Weiss said.
IAC members say it happened when the University decided to play the Civil War game on the weekend before Finals Week, when the decision to move forward on the Academic Learning Center for Athletes was made and when baseball and competitive cheer were added.
“I’m not saying there’s been any deliberate attempt to keep us in the dark,” Weiss said. “When the University comes out and says that they’ve consulted with the IAC it should not be represented as though the IAC approved it.”
But fundamentally, it’s an issue of semantics, because University President Dave Frohnmayer says that when he says the IAC was consulted, it in no way means he’s implying the IAC gave its approval.
“When I talk about consultation it’s usually on a multiple sense,” Frohnmayer said. Frohnmayer consults with the Faculty Advisory Council, the Campus Planning Committee, the leadership of the University Senate, among others.
Moreover, the IAC doesn’t make official votes, thus gauging its conclusions “one way or another about the level of agreement or disagreement would be presumptuous,” Frohnmayer said.
But it still upsets the committee.
Professor and IAC member Richard Sundt feels that Frohnmayer misled the State Board of Higher Education at its Nov. 2 meeting when Frohnmayer was updating the board about the basketball arena’s funding model and told them, “I know that Director (Pat) Kilkenny has worked with the Intercollegiate Athletic Committee of the University on a regular basis updating them.”
Kilkenny hasn’t attended any of the IAC’s meetings this year because of scheduling conflicts. He has been to one via telephone conference call. The committee also has not talked about the arena’s newest funding model, which is that construction will be paid for with $200 million of bonds and will be paid back over the next 40 years with revenue the arena will generate.
Sundt sent a letter to state board members expressing how he didn’t think it was fair for Frohnmayer to mention the IAC when talking about how the campus had been consulted about the funding model because it hadn’t been brought up yet in its current form. The IAC was scheduled to talk about it five days after the state board had its meeting. That discussion was later postponed until December.
“It’s black and white,” Sundt told the Emerald. “Either it’s been discussed or not. For him to say we’ve been consulted, OK, well maybe two or three years ago, but not in the form that it is in today.”
Weiss said she thought the committee has been adequately consulted on the arena, but developments move quickly and haven’t been talked about this year because the committee is still waiting for more information.
Frohnmayer was baffled that anyone would feel there hasn’t been adequate communication.
“The IAC has been informed by Pat (Kilkenny) or by memorandum or general campus communication of which I’ve sent several,” Frohnmayer said. “(Sundt’s letter) is really quite an insulting comment and unjustified.”

A changing committee

The situation illustrates how the committee’s high turnover and a long buildup of miscommunication between the administration and the committee has pushed the IAC to question what its purpose is.
It’s been around in some form since the early 1900s, and for the past several years it’s been a group that has simply been informed but not had many meaningful discussions, Weiss said. She said that is changing and the IAC is now trying to have more influence.
The tipping point came in mid-November when President Frohnmayer told the University Senate that a deal had been finalized to create an academic learning center for athletes.
Administrators told the IAC about the center last school year, but it had fallen to the back-burner and wasn’t discussed again until about an hour before the University Senate was to meet on Nov. 14.
At noon on Nov. 14, the administration sent e-mails to the IAC members telling them that there would be a special phone conference at 1:45 that day – one hour and 15 minutes before the senate was to meet.
On the phone, administrators told the members of the IAC that were able to get together that they were going forward with the plan to build the center.
When Frohnmayer made his presentation about the center to the University Senate, he told the senate that the IAC had been consulted on the project, which gave the impression that the IAC had agreed with what the administration was doing, Weiss said.
Frohnmayer said he has not intended to mislead anyone.
“I would never consciously represent that because there’s consultation it necessarily means that everyone is of the same mind,” Frohnmayer said. “I think there have been a couple of missed opportunities to have a full dialogue, (but) that’s not traced to ill will, but to scheduling problems or assumptions.”
Weiss said the committee now understands that if it wants to have more input in athletic projects, it needs to be more proactive. It recently assigned a few IAC members to stay informed on the progress of the baseball team.
“We’ve been having a communication problem,” Weiss said. “So we had this meeting. I think it was Nathan Tublitz who said we have to stop talking about ‘us and them,’ because we all have the best interests of the University at heart, the best interests of athletics at heart. We want to be able to find good ways of working constructively together. And I think (our meeting on Thursday) will go far in helping bridge and promote better understanding among everyone who’s a member of the IAC.”
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