Regents Bear Responsibility For Athletic Shortfall, Not Students

Next week, the students at The University of Texas at Tyler (UT-Tyler) will participate in a week-long election to decide the fate of two proposals to increase their student fees. One is an increase to the athletics fee from $16 per semester credit hour (SCH) to $20 dollars SCH with a $300 dollar max. The other is to the recreational facility fee, from $40 to $70 dollars per semester. 

While athletic supporters present these fee increases to students as necessary hikes to meet the demands of UT-Tyler’s competition in NCAA Division II (a new division for the school within recent years), it appears the deeper reason the university needs a fee increase is because of failure within the administration. 

According to UT-Tyler Athletics Director Howard Patterson, who spoke at a campus-wide town hall about the fees on Oct. 19, former UT-Tyler President Michael Tidwell decided to transition to DII without the full funding in place. 

Patterson told a questioner at the town hall that “Dr. Tidwell was the driving force behind going to Division II.” The questioner asked why the university was involved in paying for the athletics program's annual deficit when the program also receives money from student fees.  

Patterson said, “When we went to Division II, it was clear upfront that we don’t(sic) have the funds to play at the same level at Division II as we did at Division III. So the deal was that whatever the fee projection was, that money goes first to funding athletics and then whatever the deficit is is made up by the university,” he explained. 

(Now, for anyone unfamiliar with UT-Tyler’s current situation, Tidwell left the university in January 2021 for reasons undisclosed to the public. Why he might have left is a discussion for another time, but the reality for this discussion is that he is gone now and the university has the financial shortfall to address.) 

Here it is important to recognize this all-important point: the athletics program is in the financial position it is in today because, for whatever reason—wise or unwise—former President Tidwell decided to transition the school to DII before it had the necessary funding. 

The student body had nothing—absolutely nothing—to do with this decision. Yet now, administrators ask students to pay for this conundrum by a professional administrator out of their personal pockets. 

For the UT-Tyler administration to ask for and for The University of Texas Board of Regents to approve a fee increase, for this reason, is, in this author’s view, an abdication of responsibility by both The Board and the local administrators. Such a move attempts to make up for professional failure at the students' personal cost. 

Rather than making the children store up for the parents, instead, the parents should take action to store up for the children. That is, The Board of Regents should use its own resources to solve this problem created by its administrator. It should find a solution that does not bring adverse effects on the students they serve. 

In this case, this means that The Board should either approve for the university to increase its subsidy to the athletics program in order to meet the financial shortfall or command it return to Division III where it can participate on a level of competition it can afford. 

There may be other actions The Board can take, such as any available UT-System funds to bring temporary aid or regent members’ personal intervention to raise financial support for UT-Tyler’s athletics program. In any case, The Board not only has the responsibility to solve the problem but is also empowered to do so. And so it should. 

Though it may be challenging or costly, bearing responsibility for your own failures and for the people underneath you is what leaders are supposed to do. The Board’s agent, former president Tidwell, a professional administrator, apparently made a gamble that failed to pay off in the end. Therefore, the responsibility lies with The Board of Regents, not the student body. The Board should reject any affirmative outcome in next week’s election, and resolve to solve the athletics program’s financial problems on its own, because when someone under your authority makes a mistake, it’s the responsibility of the leader to step in and fix it.

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Twitter: @jhescock12

What do you think about the fee proposals? Let me know in the comments below.