(Ignore that this video is sideways I took it with my phone)
This past Saturday, the 18th, was SCSU's home opener. Now I'm not going to lie & say that I'm a huge football fan. I'm not. I honestly could take it or leave it. This is my senior year & I've only ever been to one other game at SCSU. Maybe 2. Everyone claims that we have a terrible football team. Now granted I've only been to 2 games that I can recall, but we've won both. We won on Saturday 31-26 against Winona State. We're 2-1 this season so far, which is better than I can say for the Vikings. The homecoming game that I went to last year, while I don't remember the exact score, or even who we played, I can tell you we won by quite a large margin.
The reason for the video up top? Well they clearly had fireworks after the game, which was cool don't get me wrong, but completely unnecessary. My school is the second largest in the state second only to The University of Minnesota - Twin Cities campus. However, it is quickly asking to become one of the bottom colleges in the state. Due to "budget issues", I use that term lightly & will explain further later, last spring 26 academic programs alone were cut, not to mention some of the staff that goes along with those programs. This fall, there are talks of cutting even more staff & programs because they simply aren't in the budget. They are also talking about cutting the football team along with many other sports programs. How ironic that they want to cut football yet spend the money on fireworks for after the game huh?
Now why I use this term lightly. The way I see it maybe we do have a slight budget issue, what college doesn't, however I blame whoever is planning our budget. We don't have enough money to upkeep what is now around 30 programs, staff, or athletic teams (There goes half your students by the way SCSU, good thinking) however we have the budget for...
- A $30 million renovation on our perfectly good hockey center.
- A proposed re-design to our perfectly good student center that would cost well over $10 million. (That not a single current student will be present to see because we will all have graduated by the time it's completed. This was put to a student vote, after announcing all the program cuts that had to be made. It failed so they are going to try again.)
- Random things that have been added around campus to "enhance" our appearance"
- Fireworks at a football game
- Etc.
Perhaps I'm just ignorant but perhaps SCSU should figure their shit out & how to keep academic & athletic programs so that they can keep their students around before they try to improve the outward appearance that won't even matter when no one is attending because they can't get an athletic scholarship or attend for their major of choice...
As A St. Cloud resident, I feel I can address this issue with some knowledge. If you look at the research done by the St. Cloud Times, the NHC renovation was a great investment. Hockey at SCSU is the only moneymaking sport that they have. It pulls in tons of recognition and money. Without the renovation, they have the possibility of losing attention and attraction for the hockey program and ultimately the school, therefore losing more money.
ReplyDeleteThe same goes for things like the Atwood/Student Center re-design idea and other appearance upgrades. These things factor greatly into a student's decision to attend a school... you need to make a school up-to-date and appealing.
So while I understand the frustration over their desire to make these upgrades while fighting a budget problem, I also understand where they are coming from.
I think what we need to look at, though, is the funding. Funding for projects like the NHC reno and some of the redesign come from funds designated and available specifically for those types of things.
Maybe we should think about Higher Ed funding on a state/national (political/govt) level too... That, IMHO, is where the problem lies.