The Washington State University Faculty Senate has received a recommendation to oppose the administration’s plan to help fund athletics.
The WSU administration plans to ask the university regents to approve sending 2 to 3 million dollars a year to athletics. The department has been running a multi-million-dollar annual deficit for several years. Cougar Athletics’ accumulated debt has reached 120 million dollars. WSU President Kirk Schulz has stated that once the department ends its annual deficits Cougar Athletics will pay back its accumulated debt to the institution.
The Faculty Senate Ad Hoc Committee is recommending that the faculty senate oppose the request to subsidize athletics. The recommendation will be discussed during Thursday’s faculty senate meeting.
The recommendation says the spending would significantly hinder WSU’s ability to perform its core land grant institution mission regarding education, research, and outreach. The memo states that the faculty are alarmed that WSU would subsidize a university entity that’s neither essential nor self-sustaining. The committee says that academic departments have made painful sacrifices to balance their budgets.
The committee argues that there is no data to support the assumption that athletics plays a crucial role in enrollment and retention to graduation at WSU. The recommendation says that subsidizing athletics will negatively impact employee morale and may cause some faculty to begin looking for jobs elsewhere.
The committee wants to know how Cougar Athletics will pay back its accumulated debt and asks if WSU can afford the luxury of an athletics department that is not self-sustaining.
The recommendation notes that the faculty senate wants to work with the administration to make athletics financially sustainable.
