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Sunday, November 07, 2004

ADDENDUM to "University Diaries Salutes
the Boycotting Students
of Portland State University"


[see UD post below, 11/05/04]:



FAUSTIAN FOOTBALL

' "Being a public university in this day and age requires you to work with corporations and through corporations," said Cathy Dyck, Portland State's interim vice president for finance and administration. "That doesn't mean you sell your soul." '


Are you sure, Cathy? You know, you don't need a name like "Adrian Leverkuhn" to find yourself in this sort of predicament. You can have a cheery American name like "Cathy" too. Let us look at the particulars...





Cathy tells us that given the decline in state support for higher education, universities like PSU are forced to turn to corporations. And yet, and yet, and yet...

' ATHLETIC COSTS WEIGH ON UNIVERSITIES: UO says its department is self-supporting, but OSU and PSU receive millions of dollars that could go toward academics ' says OREGONLive.com in a recent article wherein the selfsame Cathy Dyck is called on the carpet to explain why "Portland State's athletic department, which saw its football team post a 4 - 7 record last season, had an operating loss of $3.4 million in fiscal 2003-04, a figure officials blamed in part on poor ticket sales and fewer donations. The university subsidized nearly the entire loss to keep athletics in the black. ... At Portland State, 115 student athletes compete in football and men's basketball, sports that are supposed to pay for their programs and cover 195 student athletes in other sports.... The main culprit was football... "First thing we've got to do,' said Tom Burman, Portland State's athletic director, "is we've got to turn our program around." '

Cathy's quoted as saying that getting to a point where a major American university is no longer held financially hostage to how many games their football team wins each year might take some time. So if, meanwhile, PSU has to make up that money by hiring corporate card issuers who harass its student body into spending as much money as possible, even as they're accumulating college tuition debt (the HigherOne website boasts about the million bucks or so that students at another university that issues their card have recently spent), that's something the situation, in Cathy's words, "requires." It certainly doesn't point to a university losing its soul.