Faculty and coaches spar over athletic cuts

Southeast Missouri State University faculty members and coaches squared off over plans to cut the school's athletics budget at a packed forum on Monday.

Just how much will be cut from athletics hasn't been decided, although $80,000 has been mentioned by school officials who are looking at trimming costs campuswide because of decreased state funding.

School officials hope to have a budget plan worked out by Sept. 25 and present it to the Board of Regents for final action on Oct. 18.

Cutting athletics spending was the main topic discussed at the forum at the University Center. The meeting drew a standing-room-only crowd of over 200 people -- faculty, staff, students, coaches and boosters -- to the Party Room for the third of four budget forums. The final meeting is scheduled for 3:30 p.m. Friday at the University Center.

Don Kaverman, athletics director, said after the meeting that budget cuts could limit recruiting, force university teams to stay in lower-cost hotels on their road trips and reduce the school's spending on marketing its teams.

$184,000 cut suggested

Biology professors Allen Gathman and Walt Lilly said at the meeting that the university already subsidizes its intercollegiate athletics by $3.3 million a year. They suggested the university cut its annual subsidy by $184,000 as part of the school's cost-cutting moves. Southeast fields seven men's sports teams and nine women's teams.

Gathman and Lilly said education, not athletics, is the central mission of the university.

Lilly said athletics can absorb such a budget cut.

"We're not going to get rid of athletics," said Lilly, who added that he is a fan of Southeast sports.

But coaches, a former student athlete and a major athletics booster argued against major spending cuts to the university's intercollegiate athletics program. They said sports help advertise the university to prospective students, boosts fund raising for the school and benefits the local economy.

Beer distributor and athletics booster Mike Kohlfeld said sports funding shouldn't be cut.

"I think athletics markets our town," he said. "It brings students in here."

Aside from out-of-towners, the Cape Girardeau public cares about its local sports teams, Kohlfeld said. "People just follow sports," he said.

38 percent of budget

Kaverman said Southeast's athletics generates about 38 percent of its budget. That includes $320,000 a year from the NCAA, $400,000 in basketball and football ticket sales and $260,000 a year in "guaranteed revenue" payments from schools in major athletic conferences to play Southeast in football and basketball.

Those schools pay universities like Southeast to play them at their campuses. Those schools typically can count on winning those games while institutions receiving the payments, like Southeast, look at it as a moneymaker.

Kaverman said the booster club raises $625,000 a year for the athletics program. "We work on fund raising every day," he said after the meeting. But he said increased fund raising won't make up for significant budget cuts.

Gary Garner, men's basketball coach, said athletics also brings more minority students to the university.

"The minorities I recruit would not be coming if it wasn't for basketball scholarships," he said.

Garner said the success of Southeast's sports teams helps sell the school to Missouri lawmakers, a key factor in lobbying for state funding for the school each year. Athletics also help boost enrollment and secure donations for the university, he said.

Can't rally around biology

Graduate student and former Southeast softball player Shelley Conroy said people won't "rally around a biology class" but will cheer for the university through its sports teams.

But the appeal of athletics goes deeper than that. "It makes you grow as a person," she said.

School officials want to come up with half a million dollars in budget savings to go along with the $4.5 million the school already has made up through a tuition increase and cost-cutting moves including delays in filling vacant positions, cuts in equipment purchases, deferred maintenance and elimination of some staff positions, mostly through attrition.

Besides cutting athletics, university administrators also are considering restructuring various university offices and academic departments, cutting teaching and staff positions. The school also may increase the textbook rental fee.

School officials say the textbook rental fee may be increased by a dollar per course, bringing the fee to $15 per course.

Jill Windisch, Student Government vice president, said she would support such an increase. "One dollar more is not bad," she said, because renting textbooks would still be cheaper than buying them.

mbliss@semissourian.com

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