Athletics diverts funds away from academic mission

opinion@dailylobo.com

While sports and athletics are an important part of any university, the University of New Mexico has given an unbalanced portion of money and attention to the University’s athletics program. This year, Athletics submitted to the Student Fee Review Board a $3.5 million request for funds to come from student fees.

This increase would raise student fees by $19, on top of the $131.75 taken last year from student fees for Athletics. Last year, 24 percent of all student fee money was spent on Athletics, and this year, the program is requesting $420,000 more than last year.

Indeed, the Board of Regents ignored the Student Fee Review Board last year when the board recommended that only $81.75 per student be taken of student fees for Athletics instead of the requested amount of $131.75.

Again, sports and athletics are important, they should not take precedence above or money away from the University’s academic mission. When looking at where the money goes, it seems that little of it is being used in pursuit of the academic mission of the University. Of the $3.1 million give to Athletics last year, $835,000 went to travel costs, $500,000 went to equipment, $380,000 went to athlete care, $944,000 went to complimentary tickets for UNM students and $420,000 was marked for band and cheerleader funding and finally for academic support for athletes.

Of that $3.1 million, only a portion of about 13 percent of those funds went to academics. While the deputy Athletics director said, in defense of the recent request, that athletes have higher graduation rates, most of the Athletics spending is not on academic support for athletes. In addition, it seems very preferential to spend increasing amounts for the needs of the 450 student athletes at UNM while many other student organizations that help large numbers of UNM students must fight for the funding that is left over. To put this spending to an individual scale, last year UNM spent $53,416 on each basketball player, according to Albuquerque Business First, much more financial attention than most UNM students receive.

In addition, there are parts of this budget that could be better used instead of increasing funding and student fees for Athletics.

The largest chunk of the money given to Athletics is the spending on complimentary ticket for students. However, according to the Albuquerque Journal, UNM Athletics finished last year with a deficit, mostly due to lagging attendance at football games. It does not make great sense to spend so much money on tickets for students who are not always going to games. If this spending were decreased, funds could be put elsewhere in the budget and student fees would not have to be increased for Athletics.

UNM athletes and teams are something we can be proud of, and we should support them. However, we must remember that our first priority at UNM should be academics.