Answering all of the quesitons related to Tuesday's UMass Faculty Senate meeting and its impact on the football program.
AMHERST — On Tuesday afternoon, the University of Massachusetts Faculty Senate had a regularly scheduled meeting inside the Herter Hall Annex. Part of its agenda was an interim report of the Senate’s Ad Hoc Committee on FBS Football.
You probably have a lot of questions about what that means. MassLive.com has the answers.
Q: What is the Faculty Senate?
A: The Faculty Senate’s website states the following:
“The Faculty Senate at UMass Amherst is a representative body which is responsible for faculty participation in university planning and governance.”
Q: What is the power of the Faculty Senate?
A: The Faculty Senate has no direct power over the athletic department. In fact, the Faculty Senate’s only direct power, as was stated during the meeting, is in academic affairs. In matters beyond academic affairs, the Senate can only make recommendations to various administrations.
Q: What does any of this have to do with football?
A: The Faculty Senate formed an Ad Hoc Committee on FBS Football “to monitor and evaluate the costs and financial impacts of FBS football,” according to its website. That committee is composed of the following individuals:
Rajesh Bhatt
Richard Bogartz
Adina Giannelli
Lisa Green
Emily Grey
Frank Hugus
Ben Johnson
Christine Kennedy
Nelson Lacey (Co-Chair)
Ernest May
John McCutcheon
W. Brian O’Connor
Max Page (Co-Chair)
Stephen Schreiber
Jaime Seguin
Anurag Sharma
Rebecca Spencer
Rod Warnick
Glenn Wong
That committee delivered a report Tuesday detailing its findings. You can view the full report at the bottom of the page, but here are a few highlights.
• The Committee pointed out that spending in Fiscal Year 2012 (the 2011 football season) was $555,410 higher than originally projected. In addition, the current projections for Fiscal Year 2013 (2012 football season) spending are $691,966 higher than the Athletic Department’s initial projections.
• The Committee was also concerned about additional expenditures not included in the football budget itself, but directly related to the FBS upgrade. This includes $260,105 in gender equity scholarships (to satisfy Title IX), $700,000 spent on marketing the program through the University’s External Relations Department and the estimated annual payment on the McGuirk Stadium renovations and new football building, which was listed at $2,070,000.
• By adding those numbers to the athletic department’s fiscal year 2013 football budget of $7,160,339, the Committee estimated expenses at $10,190,444. It then subtracted the revenue generated by the program (ticket sales, guarantees, donations, etc.) of $1,969,983 to obtain what it believes is figure spent by the University and state in support of the football program: $8,220,461.
Q: OK, so where is the conflict?
A: Members of the Faculty Senate feel that the move to the FBS was made very quickly, and without their consultation, by former Chancellor Robert Holub.
Now they are voicing their concerns.
Some members of the Faculty Senate would like to see that $8.2 million spent on academics, not on a move up in football divisions, especially in lieu of the estimated $2 million cut in state funding to the university in its next budget.
Faculty members expressed financial concerns inside their individual departments that included lack of teaching assistants, inability to pay for travel to conferences, inability to fund laboratory sections for introductory classes and even sub-standard cleanliness in university restrooms.
Dan Clawson, a professor in the Department of Sociology, had his own idea.
“We could have a lottery for graduating seniors who have debt, and take 325 of them who could have half of their student debt eliminated. That would be half of what we would do with the $8 million per year,” Clawson said.
“Then the other $4 million per year, we could fund a lottery of the departments, and have four departments each be winners of $1 million unrestricted with which they could do whatever they wanted. They could fund faculty travel, they could bring in outside speakers, they could go through a whole other range of possible options of what they did with their $1 Million.”
A non-financial concern that was brought to the table was brain injuries in contact spots, especially football.
Q: But can the Faculty Senate act?
A: While the Senate itself can’t execute anything, it can make a motion. The motion presented Tuesday was the following:
“The Faculty Senate call on the university administration to immediately consider reversing the decision to FBS football and direct the Rules Committee and the Ad Hoc Committee on FBS Football to work with the Chancellor and President to develop a plan for withdrawal from FBS football to be presented to the full Faculty Senate at its first spring semester meeting, on January 31, 2013.”
Essentially, it can urge the chancellor and president to act, but cannot put forth any sort of binding resolution itself.
Q: Did the Faculty Senate vote on football Tuesday?
A: No.
The Rules Committee, which is charged with setting the agenda for each Faculty Senate meeting, did not put the aforementioned motion on Tuesday’s agenda.
English professor Joe Bartolomeo, chair of the Rules Committee, said during Tuesday’s meeting that while he had “grave reservations” about the move to FBS, he felt that “we got into (FBS) abruptly without due diligence and due consideration, and if we’re going to get out of it, I’d like to get out of it or stay in it with due consideration of all the alternatives.”
Max Page, co-chair of the Ad Hoc Committee on FBS Football, disagreed with that notion, stating that now was the time for the Senate to act, before the university sunk any more money into what he and others felt was going to be a losing enterprise.
Page, along with seven other senators, penned a letter (the first page of the document below) explaining why a motion to suspend the rules and present a second motion to reconsider the move was important to do Tuesday.
However, that vote, which requires a two-thirds majority, failed.
Essentially, the Senate voted not to vote on football on Tuesday.
Q: So where does that leave us?
A: The discussion continued long after the motion to suspend the rules failed, and the total time the Senate spent discussing the issue totaled over 56 minutes, with various faculty members voicing their opinions on the matter.
Student Government Association President Ashkay Kapoor was also present, and spoke in support of the move.
“It’s not always about money,” Kapoor said. “You can’t put a price on school spirit.”
The committee will continue to meet and do research. The Faculty Senate could at some point decide to vote on the motion to reconsider the move to FBS, but ultimately, as mentioned before, any resolution would be non-binding.