Posted: 05/31/09 20:51, Edited: 05/31/09 20:53
by Dave Mindeman
I don't read Jim Souhan's column in the Tribune very often and I never listen to his KSTP radio show, but his current written offering had a number of broader implications and I think it illustrates a number of things that are inherent in Minnesota's budget impass.
The summation comes in the first paragraph:
Minneapolis Community and Technical College has chosen not to fund the school's highly successful basketball program after the 2009-10 season. The school's Student Senate and Student Life Budget Committee decided that basketball was not a high priority, and school President Phil Davis accepted the recommendation to withdraw funding for the program.
Now, a sportswriter will inherently defend the funding of a school's athletic program every time. That's nothing unusual. But it is the way he criticizes the decision that is worth talking about....
The process stinks. Davis (school President) told me that he admired the way the SLBC (studen budget committee) researched, justified and arrived at its decision -- a 6-2 vote to discontinue funding for basketball -- and I'm sure the eight students were diligent, but since when did college students get to make decisions of this magnitude?
College students were given a voice in how their tuition money would be spent. Obviously, Souhan's belief is that they did NOT choose wisely. But more than that, Souhan believes they have no right to make a decision like this at all. He takes it furthur:
This is the inmates running the asylum. Actually, we don't require a metaphor. This is the students running the school, which is just as crazy.
No, sorry. The students are not running the school. They are allowed input into certain budget decisions that the college has determined the student committee can be better suited to make the choices.
You know, it is like one of Governor Pawlenty's little bromides. We need to set priorities. Well, the students did and what kind of choices did they make? Souhan was told:
Davis praised Pivec (the basketball coach) and the program but said budget cuts forced hard decisions, and that student surveys revealed higher priorities -- funds for cheaper mass transportation, health care and other programs.
Hmmm...The students think that funding for mass transportation and health care get a higher priority than the school basketball program. How dare they! Thinking of ways to help them better fund their education rather than spending their hard earned dollars on basketball entertainment. The nerve....
Souhan has a rejoinder for that:
Basketball is not more important than health care, but it is wrong to pretend that the two are mutually exclusive.
Well, Mr. Souhan, they ARE mutually exclusive if you have a Governor who decides that funding for higher ed has to be cut back to balance a budget, and then, cut back some more for his unallotment power. Cutbacks like that will eventually lead to some pretty hard choices for reasonable people to make. And it is reasonable people who will make them....NOT SPORTSWRITERS.
I don't know for certain what political persuasion Mr. Souhan adheres to, but some of his final words provide a clue:
This is where leadership is required. Instead of finding creative means of keeping the basketball program alive, the students and Davis have doomed the school's best advertisement for itself.
It is not creative methods that are needed to keep favorite extracurricular activities alive. No, it is real budget dollars. A cessation of slash and burn budgeting and less dependence on tuition increases to keep our universities operating at the levels we are accustomed to and that we need.
It does takes some leadership....and quite frankly, it looks like this student group provided it. They made a hard choice. Mr. Souhan obviously doesn't like it, but there is another remedy.
Budget dollars for the school.
