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UO Senate legislation requires Ducks pay a 3% dividend to academics

03/07/2015

The students have already voted to freeze the amount they give the athletic department for tickets. Now the entire UO Senate has voted to require that athletic department to start paying a dividend to the academic side.

Diane Dietz has the report in the RG. Read it all, here:

The University Senate — amid the three-day Board of Trustees meeting — voted unanimously to require the university to eventually collect 3 percent of the athletic department’s roughly $100 million annual budget, or roughly $3 million, for general education purposes. The education tax would be phased in gradually over five years.

… But the athletic department’s budget is an ongoing tender spot for many faculty members, who see their programs as suffering by comparison. One example they point to is the Jaqua Center.

The university spends $4,000 per student-athlete for tutoring services there, according to economics professor Bill Harbaugh, who sponsored the University Senate legislation. But the university has only $225 per student to spend for tutoring services for the general run of students.

… Susan Lesyk, director of the Teaching and Learning Center, which provides tutoring services for regular students in the basement of an old brick building across campus, said at first she was glad when the Jaqua Center went up in 2010. “I don’t resent what they have. Every student should have that,” she told the trustees.

She said she was sure it meant improvement was coming for her tutoring services. She showed trustees how the services significantly upped graduation rates for disadvantaged students.

“We need a Jaqua Center for all of us,” Lisa Freinkel, vice provost for undergraduate studies, told the trustees.

Mullens said he had no idea about the cost differential between the athlete and nonathlete tutoring services. “I can’t speak to those figures. I only live in the athletics figures,” he said.

Senate Motion:

Payments by Athletic Department for General Academic Purposes

Legislation, Resolution, or Policy Adoption: Legislation

Current Status: Approved on 03/04/15

Motion:

Section I

1.1 WHEREAS in 2004, the UO Athletics Task Force, which included President Dave Frohnmayer, Athletic Director Bill Moos, NCAA Faculty Athletics Representative Jim O’Fallon, the Senate President, and many Senate and faculty representatives, concluded a three-year study of UO athletics with a report that stated as recommendation #1,

“The Task Force and the Athletic Department recommend a voluntary financial contribution by
athletics to the Presidential Scholarship fund.”[1]; and

1.2 WHEREAS in 2008 the Senate passed a resolution reiterating this recommendation[2]; and

1.3 WHEREAS in May 2012 the UO Senate passed another resolution (endorsed by four former Senate Presidents in its stronger form as legislation) requesting that the President direct the Athletic Department to end subsidies for athletics starting on 7/1/2013 and start making payments for academic purposes starting in 7/1/2014[3] [4]; and

1.4 WHEREAS two months after the 2012 resolution President Gottfredson wrote to Senate President Margie Paris that

“One intent of the resolution is to ensure that athletics is paying an appropriate share of the costs associated with tutoring and advising of student athletes and for the arena. This is clearly an appropriate aim and one with which I am fully supportive. More analysis needs to be undertaken to ascertain the nature of these obligations while preserving legitimate expectations derived from the existing agreements. We will expeditiously work to resolve these issues in collaboration with athletics.”[5]; and

1.5 WHEREAS the subsidies have not been ended, and to the contrary the payments from the Provost’s budget to support tutoring and advising at the Jaqua Center for Student-Athletes, services that are available only to student-athletes, have increased from $600K in 2008 to $1.8M for FY 2011-12 and now to $2.2M for the 2014-15 FY, after passage of the 2012 resolution. These services cost about $4,000 per student-athlete, while UO’s spending on similar services for non-athlete students averages only about $225[6]; and

1.6 WHEREAS the Athletic Department solicits donations and ticket surcharges for the Duck Athletic Fund, totaling $28M for 2014-15[7], with the statement that,

“The mission of the Duck Athletic Fund is to raise funds to offset the expenses of student-athletic scholarships and related athletic department support at the University of Oregon.”[8];and

1.7 WHEREAS in the most recently available data, for 2013-14, the Athletic Department paid only $10 million from these DAF funds to the academic side for tuition, and did not pay any of the cost of student-athlete services other than a portion of the maintenance costs of the Jaqua building[9]; and

1.8 WHEREAS UO’s academic budget has been paying $467,538 a year since 2009 to repay the portion of bonds used to purchase the Knight Arena land representing the area of the Mac Court land[10]; and

1.9 WHEREAS eleven years have now passed since the 2004 Task Force report calling for voluntary contributions from athletics toward academic scholarships, during which annual operating expenditures by the Athletic Department have increased from less than $40 million to more than $98 million[11]; and

1.10 WHEREAS during that time the athletic department has not made any such contributions and in fact has received increasing subsidies from the academic budget; and

1.11 WHEREAS the University Senate voted on February 12, 2014 that the motions on ending subsidies to the Athletic Department and payments by the Athletic Department for general academic purposes should be put forth as two separate motions;

Section II

2.1 BE IT HEREBY MOVED that the President shall provide the Senate with a budget and a schedule for implementation for payments from the Athletic Department budget for the support of general academic purposes no later than the first Senate meeting of May 2015, and that this schedule shall include a payment of no less than 0.5% of total Athletic Department revenue for the 2015-16 FY, and increasing to no less than 1% for the 2016-17 FY, and increasing in subsequent years by no less than 0.5 percentage points, until it reaches 3%.

Financial Impact:

Cost neutral

Sponsor:

William Harbaugh (Economics), Senator

[1] UO Task Force Report at http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~uosenate/dirsen034/finalreportATF04.pdf

[2] 2008 motion at http://pages.uoregon.edu/uosenate/dirsen078/US078-15.html

[3] 2012 motion at http://senate.uoregon.edu/content/payments-athletics-department-academic-purposes

[4] Endorsements of former Senate Presidents at http://www.uomatters.com/2013/05/senate-pases-motion-to-make-athletic.html

[5] Letter from President Gottfredson to President Paris at http://senate.uoregon.edu/files/President%27s Response to US2012-13_20.pdf

[6] UO Financial Transparency Report at https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/971644/uomatters/IAC/Provost payments to Jaqua Center 2012 to 2014.pdf and Register Guard story referenced athttp://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/steve_duin/index.ssf/2011/05/post_7.html

[7] Report at http://www.goducks.com/fls/500/pages/athlfin/FY15Budget.pdf

[8] Report at http://goducks.com/fls/500/pages/daf/DAF_Brochure.pdf?hq_e=el&hq_m=402524&hq_l=10&hq_v=c904dd1d98