(07-14-2017 09:18 AM)MplsBison Wrote:  

(07-13-2017 06:10 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  It's just that I think that's how intercollegiate athletics should be supported - voluntarily, the way alumni support them. Students shouldn't be compelled to. That's my only complaint.

Why? Because athletics is a non-core mission of the school, as you've spent the last three pages of the thread stating. Your argument has remained very consistent.

But what you haven't done, which I asked you to do last post, is explain why you believe that a non-core mission of a school should only be electively funded by students. Why?

As an example: upgrading a campus-wide wifi network for higher speed doesn't serve the core mission of the school, since downloading textbooks, assignments, checking school email, etc. doesn't really require a high speed connection. But students demand it, so universities spend eight and probably nine figures in some cases to install and maintain IT infrastructure. What say you? Voluntary fees only, for that?

Last post, you posited that i had a 'near-religious' objection or somesuch to intercollegiate athletics, when truth is, i have no objection to them at all unless they are funded by mandatory student fees.

Now, you seem to think i have an extremely narrow definition of what qualifies as 'mission core' activities. But I don't. It's actually quite expansive, and easily encompasses something like campus-wide wi-fi, since that sure facilitates learning processes. E.g., I do a lot of things online in my classes, and it's a big benefit to students to be able to access the internet to interface without having to go to a particular lab or location or be tethered to a wire.

We can keep naming other support-type activities if you like, a laundry list of "well what about this, what about that", but the responses will be the same.

The thing is, and IMO this really shows how egregious forced-fees on students really is, even with my expansive definition, you can't shoe-horn "big time" intercollegiate athletics into the expansive equation. It's so far removed from the mission, you can't miracle it in.