'The current price for a new University of Oregon basketball arena is $213.5 million, a significant increase over the recent estimate of $160 million. [Starts with numbers, and dramatic ones at that. As with the Univesity of Minnesota, everyone knows these university stadium projects will almost certainly be obscenely over budget.] Hasn't the time come for soul searching by those who are so avidly promoting this project? [See, this isn't the most stylish writing -- The rhetorical question's a little clunky, and prescribing soul searching for the soulless tends to make the whole effort feel futile just as the essay begins...] The enormous challenge of raising these many millions is taking a heavy toll on the university's good name. [Too many adjectives: enormous, many, heavy, good... You only want a couple of these. If you overdo it, the paradoxical result is a weakening of impact.]

The architects dubbed their design a "theater of basketball," but the arena's scale and amenities bring to mind a palace. [Pretty good. Ends with his strongest word: palace... Yet one can imagine a spiffier writer making something amusingly satirical out of this observation.] Is it not possible to erect a basic arena just large enough to provide the revenue necessary for making Duck athletics "self-sustaining"? [Why quotation marks around self-sustaining?]

Allan Price, vice president for advancement, states that the UO doesn't have to make excuses for wanting to erect the best possible facility, and that the institution carries this "philosophy" to all its projects. [Don't overuse the word 'erect.' Reason obvious. And again, no need for those quotation marks around philosophy.] Yet a few years ago, a properly equipped auditorium was cut early from designs for the UO art museum's renovation. [Excellent. Shows up their hypocrisy with a strong example.]

The first casualty of the arena initiative was longtime Athletic Director Bill Moos. The reasons behind his resignation probably lie in a report presented orally to the UO President Dave Frohnmayer. A written report, belatedly released at The Register-Guard's insistence, is uninformative and incompletely researched. Moos' removal thus served only to undermine faculty confidence in the administration.

Pat Kilkenny's appointment as athletic director may well be the right one, but the result of the job search may have been preordained. [Confusing formulation here.] Many indications support the perception [Translate this into English: A lot of people think.] that the hire was driven by only one agenda - to build the arena. The position description is unusual: It doesn't list even the most standard academic qualifications for the job, although the person hired is expected to "function as a senior official of the university."

The administration has defended Kilkenny's lack of a university degree by citing the University of Wisconsin, the University of Michigan and Purdue University as places where "boosters" have been hired as athletic directors. [Take booster out of quotation marks.] The comparison is spurious. [Good. Spurious is a nasty little word, and when used properly has quite a bite.] All three have college degrees and cannot be characterized as "boosters" in the vein of Kilkenny. Prior to becoming athletic directors, Barry Alvarez was Wisconsin's head football coach and Michigan's Bill Martin was a member of the U.S. Olympic Committee and taught courses at Michigan.

The pressure to raise funds for the arena has caused the UO to issue other problematic statements. Frohnmayer and others have argued that since the arena and Moos' buyout are donor-financed, academics are unaffected by the cost of these ventures.

This is fanciful. [Again, good. Simple, declarative, ending with a strong word.] A portion of the proceeds of the sale of Westmoreland student housing is being diverted to purchase property that may eventually play some role in the arena project. That even a penny of this money could go for athletics is hurtful to the UO's academic mission, which for years has struggled with frightfully strained conditions: For lack of space, music students have had to practice in bathrooms. Departments have had to convert not only bathrooms but also storage closets into faculty offices. [Frightfully strained is the wrong tone -- a little too Anglo teaparty. The writer should have found one powerhouse word for those two. And the bathroom thing is incredibly strong ammunition for his case: He should have begun the essay with it. His very first line should have been about music students practicing in bathrooms. And he should have ended his essay by returning to those students.]

The earmarking of Westmoreland money for possible use on the arena makes everyone stakeholders in the project. This arena venture should not, therefore, be allowed to stay in the hands of two or three UO administrators and a couple of donors.

Truth is a casualty of the pressure to keep big-time sports on track. [The writer doesn't need this sentence. The following sentence is much stronger all by itself at the beginning of this paragraph.] Frohnmayer wrote in The Register-Guard this year, "We take great pride in such measures of our academic success as the graduation rates of our student-athletes. Those rates have risen steadily in recent years. ..."

What kind of snow job is this? [Good use of the rhetorical question here.] The NCAA's findings indicate that the graduation rate of UO athletes has fallen from 79 percent to 47 percent in five years. Obvious strategies for boosting academic performance, such as making sure all students attend classes and have time to focus on exams, are routinely ignored. This year we saw an increase in the number of football games, and we have again scheduled a Civil War game during final exams - despite a University Senate resolution against this practice. The culprit is, of course, the vast sums required to finance UO's sports machine. [It's clear from his guy-style style that this guy is far from a hothead. He's deliberative. Professorial. So as he ups the rhetoric and reveals real anger it's quite effective... as in, things must really be scandalous if people like this guy are so upset.]

Those who believe a massive, commercialized sports enterprise is "higher education" should find a way to sustain it without undermining the UO's integrity by causing administrators to shift priorities from academics to athletics. [I tell you - and I know you're tired of hearing it - quotation marks are almost always a bad idea... Just dump them.]

I urge everyone to write Frohnmayer ([email protected]). If people want sports in a big way, I encourage them to work toward an athletic program that respects and promotes the UO's educational mission.' [...not one that moves our musicians into the men's room...Something like that would've been nice... Could even have picked up on his "palace" thing up there and contrasted the sports palace to the academic toilet...]

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