FanPost

Academics vs Athletics


What makes UC Berkeley special, sports or academics?

There's an interesting thread over at bn that's related to their most recent meltdown. Specifically, some Ucla alumns are so ARRRRRGH WHOLESALE REGIME CHANGE #OCCUPY over their football program, that they've taken to not only insulting their coaches and players, but are advocating withholding funds from both their athletic department as well as their academic donations.

This made me ponder what our reaction to a similar situation would be.

The Ucla argument as I understand it (or, at least the bn argument) seems to be that athletics is at least as important a factor in the complete gestalt of Ucla, so when the revenue generating programs (football and mens hoops) are struggling, it negatively impacts the entirety of Ucla. Therefore, it is justified to hold back donations to the academic programs - in this case the UCLA Fund which is sort of a general academic pool - in order to make a point about athletics. In effect, it's almost a hostage situation where bners are saying it's okay to make academics suffer in the short term so long as the Ucla administration makes sure the athletic program gets what it "deserves".

bn is actively encouraging it's readers to no longer donate money to their academics and to make it clear that the reason for the money boycott is their dissatisfaction with their revenue athletics in general and their AD in specific, and that they will not donate again until their demand that the AD be fired is met, as part of their RAGE! WHOLESALE REGIME CHANGE!!!! thing.

Personally, I could not disagree with that sentiment more, and would never even consider withholding money from the UC Berkeley academic programs because of problems with the athletics. And I started to wonder whether others here share that feeling, or believe that supporting athletics to the extent of not donating to the academics is for the greater good of the university as a whole.

So, what do you think?

Be nice. You can find the original CGB team at WriteForCalifornia.com.

In This FanPost

Teams

Trending Discussions