RE: Scholarship Freeze Policy
I re-read the article in light of your take. I suggest you do the same.
“Bleeding resources” and “commercialization” are the key phrases.
If this is the Administration’s “stated policy”, please be so kind as to direct me to that document.
Take your head out of the sand.
Prices have increased. Administrators and consultants have been added. Long-time coaches and administrators have been shown the door, have left, or have retired. There was a general scholarship fiasco. The quality of the soccer teams have vanished, coincident with the new Administration. The swim program is in revolt. A portion of the MBB program fan base is in revolt, and the school is “starting over” from a talent perspective staring the school in the face for the 2020-2021 MBB season. Football attendance through three home games is pitiful. (BTW, that’s 2 of the big 3). The tailgating conversations as to the direction of athletics at W&M are not good.
Have I missed anything? Oh yes, we’re doing very well on diversity! Well tell that to this mother who had the guts to publicly call out the school, while her child is a member of a team being affected. One could argue that this mother “gets it” more than the Administration ... let that sink in!
Know any swim alumni? I do. The situation that the swim program is being put into by this Administration is not sitting well. It is further opening the eyes of other alumni who were non-plussed over the treatment of Shaver, who themselves had been non-plussed over the treatment of other long-time members of the Athletics Department.
The school is now looking at rumblings from the media, alumni, former athletes, parents of athletes, and the athletes themselves. In no way, shape or form, is this a healthy situation.
Instead of gradual change over a period of time befitting a three hundred year old institution, the W&M athletics program has been force-fed massive changes over a short period of time befitting the schedule of an administrator with other potential steps to climb on a career ladder. All this at a time when the state government is funding 11% of operations, according to the latest “beg” from W&M that I received in the mail this week.
If this “new stuff” doesn’t work, there will be a lot of broken pieces left for us to clean up when the next Administration comes to town.
In conclusion, I fully expect to be impressed with an announcement this week about the wonderful changes to Kaplan. That will be very welcome news, and kudos to the AD. But that news will not change the fact that, at W&M, athletes and coaches for a myriad of sports have always flourished despite tight money restrictions, and that seems to be changing, for the worse.
It profit not a man to sell his soul, nor a woman to sell her soul, for the whole world, but to sell the “soul” of a college athletics department for three sports, and a ticket to the Dance?
(This post was last modified: 10-14-2019 05:29 AM by nj alum.)
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