(11-03-2011 10:07 AM)slappywhite Wrote: This was known to have been coming down the pike for at least two years. Timing was not the issue, nor were the students moving out. Where were the faculty? They drive the university, they could have had a vote of no confidence in the president and stopped it. Who tried to organize the faculty?
On this you are wrong. There were hints two years prior that it was a possibility, but as MommaBear pointed out repeatedly, all that was at least "smoothed over" for a period. The dropping of football, when and how it happened, was a total shock to 99.9% of the campus, including students, faculty, and other administrators. And that 99.9% is not an exaggeration. As I've mentioned before, again and again and again, there was no warning that anything of the sort was imminent. I have multiple degrees from ETSU. I was NEVER contacted about trying to save football, and I'm on all the alumni lists, mailouts, etc. To my knowledge, NOT ONE SINGLE football player, either present or past, was contacted about trying to raise money for the program. And I've talked to many of them, and others on this board have said exactly the same thing. There was NO realistic, "real" effort to raise the money needed to make it work. My contacts within the university community are vast and extensive, and I can assure you that not a single contact had any knowledge of it, nor any warning of it. JoAnn Paty herself didn't know of it, or if she did, she covered it up, because (again as I've posted repeatedly), she was quoted in the
JC Press immediately after the ceremony opening the golf facility, to the effect that "ok, now we have to get working on the baseball stadium" (paraphrased, but very close to verbatim). Not a hint that there was anything worrisome about the football program.
As to the faculty, you have a point, but:
1) The faculty do
not drive the university;
2) They were apparently (from all the evidence I've heard and seen) sold a bill of goods about how dire the financial situation was if football was kept. They were not informed that student activity fees were coming regardless. Some of the more outspoken faculty members, more academically-oriented, drowned out any opposing voices. Moreso, however, stanton presented it as a "done deal", with no room to argue.
That being said, however, if more faculty had taken it upon themselves to become educated about all the pros and cons, then perhaps there would have been more of an outcry. Sadly, no one tried to organize the faculty, but.........well, see point 1 above.
