Two club baseball players who attempted to steal duffel bags full of Ducks and Beavers memorabilia from a University-owned warehouse will be allowed to compete with their team at nationals this week, but it’s unknown whether student government will pay their expenses.
Last week, a student government committee gave the baseball team $5,800 to pay for players’ airfare and hotel costs, but the student government president on Friday blocked the request after learning about the attempted thefts.
ASUO President Adam Walsh said Sunday that he wants the Student Senate to evaluate whether it should deduct the players’ expenses from the amount it will give the team.
Doing so would mean a deduction of $446, money that the team would have to fundraise to repay when it returns from nationals next week, said Bradley Ficek, the team’s coach and manager.
Travis Lee Chock and Peter Richardson Phillips, both 23, pleaded guilty to second-degree attempted theft in Lane County Circuit Court on Thursday after they were arrested April 5 for packing two duffel bags full of memorabilia, intending to steal them. The men wandered from a batting cage area of the former Joe Romania car dealership building east of campus into a part of the building storing boxes of memorabilia. They triggered a motion-activated alarm, and public safety officers caught them.
After the arrests, the University cut the team’s access to the batting cages for about a month and a half, and the team may not be able to use the cages next year.
Chock is a third baseman for the team; Phillips is a pitcher and a shortstop.
Walsh, Vice President Kyla Coy and several members of the Senate agreed that the Senate should re-evaluate the amount it reimburses Club Sports for the trip after the Emerald reported the attempted thefts on Friday, Walsh said.
The team, which has gone to nationals for the past two years, leaves for Ohio on Tuesday.
“(We) didn’t feel comfortable for their portion of the travel given the situation that had arisen given the batting cages,” Walsh said. “So really the only option we had at hand was for us to veto and for it to go back on the agenda of the next meeting.
“It was a tough call. It was something that we really debated.”
Coach Ficek said he isn’t angry at the decision to reconsider the allocation because it shows that the ASUO is being a conscientious spender of student money, but deducting the costs would put stress on the whole team to fundraise to pay for the two players’ expenses. Having already raised thousands of dollars, the team has exhausted many means of fundraising, he said.
Senator Mike Filippelli said he supports deducting the funds because he doesn’t want to spend incidental fee money on two students who attempted to steal from the University.
“I think they would be bad representatives of the University. I think they’d be bad representatives of the team, as well,” he said.
Ficek said the players, who each took self-imposed five-game suspensions as punishment, have learned from their mistakes and should be able to represent the University.
Athletic Department Finance Committee Chairman and Student Senator Kyle McKenzie, who plays rugby on a Club Sports team, said he hasn’t decided how he’ll vote on Wednesday, but he doesn’t think it fair to punish the whole team for the crimes.
“By deducting this money, it’s not going to just hurt two players,” he said. “It’s going to hurt this whole team and its efforts.”