… applauds the school’s decision to shut down its football program.
Western, at least in my 14 years on its faculty, never had a football culture. Most students were apathetic, faculty rarely attended games, and Whatcom County evinced little interest despite a passion for high-school games. Aside from the rivalry with Central Washington University, a football game rarely drew more than 2,000 fans. When Shepard’s decision was announced in Thursday’s Bellingham Herald, not a single reader posted a comment.
The Saturday tailgate culture of big-school football had no grip on a campus with no fraternities or crowds of community backers available in larger cities. Western students prefer active snow sports and basketball; Title IX brought women’s sports into the limelight, and Western women in crew, volleyball, and basketball developed excellent records and lots of campus support…
A commenter disagrees:
It’s beyond question that there’s not much of a “football culture” at Western. To me, the fact that the university could field a team and avoid that very “culture” was one of the great things about the program. You can make a sound argument for dropping the program. But purely line-item budgeting isn’t a good one. By that measure, Western, which doesn’t have much of a Shakespeare culture, either, would be issuing pink slips to English professors…
The problem with this argument is that universities exist to encourage a culture of Shakespeare. They’re supposed to lead people toward things like Shakespeare, even if people don’t know shit about Shakespeare and don’t care that they don’t know. Educate — to lead forth. Universities are not about leading people to football.
January 12th, 2009 at 7:45PM
And it’s an English department, not a Shakespeare department.
Isn’t it still the mission of most colleges for EVERYONE to be required to take a few courses in English to demonstrate familiarity with literature and demonstrate writing proficiency?
Or is that passe?
January 13th, 2009 at 11:44AM
I first heard this story on Lou Dobbs, in which the story was presented as a sad, sad tragedy. I immediately thought of UD.