What a disgusting way for a university to make a major decision -- by closing off debate… by stopping the exchange of ideas.

Western Kentucky University's board ran roughshod over faculty regent Robert Dietel last week, as it rushed to embrace Division I-A football. With Louisvillian Larry Zielke proposing the put-down, WKU's board told Dietel to shut up.

Contempt dripped from Zielke's explanation: "People on this board dedicate their time for free. They have better things to do than let some university professor just keep talking about the same things…. He wasn't cut off. He had time to speak."

In other words, crawl back into the library stacks, Prof. We're running this place.

Regent Tamela Smith got the back of her colleagues' hand, too. "I'm greatly disappointed that the board shut down the discussion," she said. "I'm a staff regent, and the staff brought concerns to me to be addressed. I just had a few questions, a few comments."



Indeed, she had intended to vote for the move from I-AA and Gateway Conference football to I-A and Sun Belt competition in that sport. But, put out over being put down, she abstained. Good for her.

This move to I-A football is going to cost millions, and it will be financed on the backs of students, as if they don't have enough trouble these days shouldering all the increased costs of a college education.

WKU students will be paying an additional $70 per semester, starting next fall.

Campus vanity doesn't come cheap. And it can't stand real scrutiny.

Athletics director Wood Selig claims the move to Division I-A will put the Hilltoppers in the company of such schools as Michigan and Stanford.

How soon does he expect either of them to schedule WKU?

Potential Sun Belt opponents include such powerhouses as Middle Tennessee, Troy, Arkansas State, Florida Atlantic, Louisiana-Lafayette, North Texas, Florida International and Louisiana-Monroe.

Think of all the TV exposure. The big night for conference competition on the tube this year was Oct. 18 -- a matchup between Florida Atlantic and Louisiana-Lafayette on ESPN2.

Did you catch that one?

To stay in Division I-A, WKU will have to average 15,000 fans at its home games. But it hasn't even been filling L. T. Smith Stadium, where attendance has been 10,279 so far this year and was 12,795 last year -- despite all the interest built up as the school won the 2002 NCAA Division I-AA national championship and went on to complete 10 consecutive winning seasons.

Never mind. Spend $37 million enlarging the stadium from 17,500 to 24,000. Build it and they will come. Let the faculty stay home and read Chaucer if they don't like it.

Faculty members who voted on the move to Division I-A were opposed, almost two to one. When the school's 19,000 students were polled, 1,095 were for it and 600 were against. Maybe the rest went home early for the weekend.

Selig and WKU president Gary Ransdell are looking forward to the possibility of a Bowl Championship Series appearance. Maybe that would produce some dough, but there are so many bowls these days that a bid to most of them carries about as much prestige as an invitation to a Tupperware party.

Dietel is right. He knows his intercollegiate athletics history. When you commit to big-time competition, and especially to the lavishly expensive business of fielding a winning football team, the push to spend what's necessary to buy a winner is almost irresistible. And the price just keeps going up. Meanwhile, a long list of academic needs and educational opportunities goes unmet.