OPINION: UT-Tyler TRIPLE Charges Students For Athletics

("Money - Savings" by 401(K) - 2012 via Flickr)

Recently, The Student Fee Advisory Committee (SFAC), which is that student-led fee oversight committee, published its recommendations to the UT-Tyler President for the 2023-2024 fiscal year. 

The committee receives funding requests from various university departments each year and these departments typically oversee a category of activity which the Texas education code classifies as "student services". 

According to Texas statute, student services are those activities which "directly involved or benefit students." Some examples the statute gives are activities such as a student newspaper, student government, a textbook rental program and other cultural or functional activities which are typical to collective student life on a university campus. 

One gets the impression--and rightly so--that these student services are for activities that enrich the collective and classical student university experience and service the student body as a whole. 

Now, these student services have their own fee, which is properly The Student Services Fee. However, other student-funded activities, such as the fine arts center and the student medical clinic, have their own separate fees. So, it is typical that separate student services have their own separate fee which does not draw upon the collective pool of revenue in The Student Services Fee. 

Now, I wrote previously that UT-Tyler violates the Texas Education Code by its appropriating money for the Patriots Athletics program from multiple student sources simultaneously, namely, both the mandatory student services fee and the mandatory athletics fee, which is the program's own separate, stand alone fee and funding mechanism. 

In other words, it is illegal (in this author's view) and unethical for the university to pull from both fees for athletics funding at the same time. When it does, then it is, in effect, double-charging UT-Tyler students for one athletics program. This is unethical and irresponsible, as I have written previously. 

However, given that the university also delivers an institutional subsidy on top of the athletics fee and on top of the student services fee, then the truth is that the institution not just double charges but triple charges its students. It does so once with the athletics fee, twice with the student services fee and thrice with an institutional subsidy from designated tuition. 

University administration must be ethical with its use of student funds and it must be worthy of student trust with these endeavors. 

However, I have found few people are willing to step-up to this challenge on their own. 

For one, the athletics program has not expressed interest in removing its stake in its current setup unless there are additional funds available in the athletics budget to absorb the portion of costs that the student services budget now carries. (The collective athletics burden upon the student services budget is roughly $382,000 dollars, if one includes the athletics program's subsidiaries, such as the dance team and cheerleading squad, which also occupy the student services fee budget. Athletics' burden accounts around 13% of student services' budget.)

With financial costs as these, it is unlikely that athletics will move out of student services budget soon. (It also committed to this position ["as soon as funds are available"] in 2022.) This means it is likely to stay in this negotiating position until a stronger force prevails. 

Moreover, while there may be a legitimate problem with athletics' inappropriate consumption of student resources, UT-Tyler's athletics program is popular with administration and students on-campus (mostly student athletes and Greek life alike). To take on the athletics program, it appears, is to effectively take on the popular kid. Few students' wallets hurt so bad as to suffer reputational loss as this. Whoever takes on athletics must do so at a social cost.

Yet, it must be done. Contrary to the aura on-campus where many of the student athletes, Greek life students and administrators congregate (those athletics supporters), there are thousands of off-campus commuter students who are less likely to tolerate encroachments on their costs to education. 

The solution to this situation is to somehow rally commuter students to rebuff both athletics' encroachment and the administration's capitulation. 

It seems the answer might be to submit another student-wide vote on an another proposal to increase the athletics fee. There must be a way for the student body to go on-record about its feelings about the athletics program and about their view of the program's place in student life. The answer must be for the student body to go on-record. 

This will not happen without a leader within student government to make it happen. This student senator must not only move for a formal student-wide vote on issues that pertain to the athletics program and its funding, but also must harness popular opinion to bring the student body's relationship with the athletics program to the fore in student government's internal political agenda. 

In other words, he (or she) must use the previous failed athletics fee increase vote and any subsequent vote or poll to provide the basis for re-examining the athletics program's relationship to the student body. He must also use it as the basis for moving the conversation along to closure on the topic, such as in a decisive campus-wide vote. 

Should the student body speak again as it did in 2022 when it rejected the previous proposal for a athletics fee increase, then student leaders within student government will have enough demonstrated political capital from the student body to pursue other reforms to the student body's relationship with athletics without a student-wide vote. This is how the student body, through its elected representatives, will ultimately hold the athletics program--and the university administration--accountable.

The answer for bringing closure on the question of student opinion about the unethical financial burden the university places upon students is action from a leader (or a group of leaders) within student government. This seems to be the only way to bring substantial reform and students relief. 

This situation awaits a leader. Now the only question is, who will it be?

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Feature Image: "Money - Savings" by 401(K) - 2012 via Flickr