Senate hears athletics budget report
Committee finds concern about athletics sapping academic resources "unfounded"

By MARA McGINNIS
Reporter Assistant Editor

The widespread concern about athletics sapping resources from the academic units "seems largely unfounded" since only $4.4 million of the athletics $10.2 million budget comes from the state and most of it is returned indirectly to the campus through division-generated grants-in-aid, a Faculty Senate committee reported at a meeting of the full Senate on Tuesday.

Frank Cerny, professor and chair of the Department of Physical Therapy, Exercise and Nutrition Sciences, and chair of the senate's Committee on Athletics and Recreation, presented the report, noting that he had been a "skeptic" before he began preparing it.

"I coached in the Big 10 and saw the corruption that went on there," said Cerny. "I didn't want to see UB develop that mentality."

But after meeting with administrators in the Division of Athletics (DOA), Cerny said he was convinced that UB's move to Division 1-A was a realistic, affordable initiative and that the university could compete at that level.

However, he did note that the DOA must "do a better job of communicating with its various publics." The report states that "continued openness in the budgetary process should be sufficient to satisfy all but the most zealous skeptics."

Cerny added that interpreting the funding of athletics by simply adding the categories in the budget can be misleading. Thirty-five percent ($3.2 million) of the revenue generated by DOA comes from student fees, while 25 percent ($2.5 million) is generated through program revenue, mainly corporate sponsorships ($730,000) and ticket sales ($483,000). These revenues, which constitute 60 percent of the total budget, are non-transferable to other campus units.

In this regard, the report argues, the DOA is no different from academic units across the campus responsible for generating sufficient resources to justify its state allocation.

However, the report also reveals that the DOA incurred an accumulated deficit of approximately $3.5 million during the transition from Division III to Division I (1992-2000). Senior Vice President Robert Wagner explained that this deficit was made up with university income-fund reimbursable (IFR) money and did not affect the university's academic operating budget. Wagner added that "the basic investment has been made" in athletics and that he will begin a process to reimburse the IFR account over a period of years, beginning in 2000-2001.

Wagner added that the use of IFR money was a consideration built into the development of the athletics program from the beginning. "We knew we were going to have IFR deficits. That was the game plan we began with, and that is the game plan we followed."

Samuel D. Schack, professor of mathematics, expressed concern about the "remarkable contrast" between the situation in athletics, which he defined as a "secondary mission at best" of the university, and the state of the College of Arts and Sciences, a unit he described as serving the "primary interests of the university" and one that has been "severely degraded."

President William R. Greiner explained that the debt situation in athletics differs tremendously from the deficit in CAS because the CAS debt is an accumulated and a cumulative one, whereas the deficit in athletics was a single, one-time debt.

The report also notes that 500 students participate directly in the university's athletic programs, 190 of whom are on scholarships supported by non-state funds, generating about $2.5 million in tuition "give-back."

Cerny reported that "a bigger issue than the (athletics) budget" is gender equity. In fiscal year 1998-99, men's sports accounted for 47 percent of the total budget, while women's sports accounted for 22 percent. A three-year plan calls for a 9 percent increase in the number of men's scholarships and a 50 percent increase in the number of women's scholarships.

According to the report, the DOA reduced its budget at the beginning of the 1999-2000 academic year, as did the rest of the university. However, the cut was somewhat balanced by a state legislative initiative that allocated $800,000 to public institutions competing at the Division 1-A level to help attain gender equity.

In other business, the senate passed a resolution outlining policies for obstruction or disruption by students in the classroom, behavioral expectations-to be published as part of the student rules and regulations-and strategies for instructors for dealing with distractions in the classroom.

The senate also considered recommendations on assessments of instructional effectiveness prepared by the Teaching and Learning Committee. One recommendation-to establish a substantial development effort for faculty members to expand and improve their instruction-prompted some to suggest re-establishing the Office of Teaching Effectiveness, which helped faculty members improve their teaching skills. But committee members said they thought the same goals could be reached by coordinating with the Educational Technology Center, rather than creating a new entity.