It has long been recognized that students at other Big Sky Conference schools pay far more in student athletic fees than those at the University of Montana.
And over the years the league’s students have voted to impose even greater athletic fees to finance such improvements as locker and weight training rooms, meeting facilities, academic study areas and athletic offices.
There is no doubt some of UM’s ancillary athletic facilities are antiquated, inferior and in dire need of renovation, rebuild or total replacement.
Facilities as well as student services, degree potential, instructor-student ratio, ambience and a host of other factors are all part of the recruiting package used to attract potential student athletes to attend the University of Montana.
And every bit of it is considered by student-athletes and their parents in the recruiting process and used by competing schools to point out deficiencies at a particular school and advantages at your institution.
After all, in the days of playing football at Dornblaser Field before the construction of Washington Grizzly Stadium, prospective recruits often were told the team played at an off-campus facility and never were taken to the then beat-down structure with wooden bleachers perched on South Higgins Avenue.
And, believe me, there’s a reason recruits of sports other than football often are paraded out on the sidelines in front of a capacity stadium crowd during their recruiting visit.
I once had a mercy-recruiting visit to the University of Washington and, while the stadium has since nearly doubled in size, standing on the field with the stands seemingly reverberating when the Huskies took the field against Washington State College more than 40 years ago was an experience I’ll never forget.
So there’s no argument here against the need or, for that matter, financing part of the athletic upgrades with an increase of the athletic fee to place it more in line with the league teams and peer institutions. That said, even taking into consideration that tuition costs continue to escalate while wages, if you’re fortunate to have a job, remain stagnant or, in many cases, have decreased.
But I question the method used to increase the student fees.
After a lengthy recent meeting of the Associate Students of the University of Montana, who were barraged by a well-organized group of student-athletes to support a dramatic escalation, the group voted 15-5 to approve a yearly increase from $92 to $144.
A mere 20 students, albeit voted into office by other students, voted to approve a 56 percent increase.
Now it is easy to argue that ASUM represents the student body and, thus, with the pulse of the campus and the bulk of information at their beckoning, are both capable and charged with making such decisions.
But who was the student body president and senators during your college days and just how many times did you participate in campus-wide elections?
Was it because you weren’t interested or was it because you just didn’t pay much attention to reading the student newspaper or other avenues and were concentrating on your next test or even the upcoming weekend activities.
An ASUM review board will consider the measure further next month and, again, I sure do not have a problem with the needs expressed or even the lobbying by student-athletes from a plethora of sports.
But even though a total vote count might resemble most campuswide elections, such an escalation would just smell better if it were considered by all students.