The Logic Escapes Me
By K.C. Meadows, the editor of the Daily JournalThere is something of a hubbub going on at Mendocino Community College about the recent decision by the college deans that the number one priority for a new full-time faculty position at the college is a football coach.
This subject was debated keenly at my Thursday morning coffee group at Schat's Bakery last week when in walked college faculty member Susan Bell (known at the college as either the defender of education or the rabble rouser from you-know-where, depending on your point of view) her husband, Neill (whose letter on the subject appears today), and Don Vasconcellos, executive vice president of academic affairs at the college.
Others around the table were, I think, as interested as I was to hear Mr. Vasconcellos try to defend the college's position.
None of us could quite grasp the logic of giving first priority to a football coach at a college where language instructors are sorely needed in this bilingual age and which claims to be serving the local coimmunity.
The logic, according to Mr. Vasconcellos goes like this:
Football players are full-time students. There are 60 football players. In order to keep those 60 full-time athletes and bring "stability" to that program, the college needs to have a faculty coach. The nonfaculty coaches they now employ tend to get burned out and leave. The last time the college changed coaches the football team dropped by half to about 30 students. The college can't afford to have those kinds of fluctuations. After the college brings "stability" to the football team, it will move on to other areas where there may be some full-time student growth potential.
My problem with this logic is that it tells me that the college doesn't see that 60 football students should not be the focus of improvements at a campus with 900 (Vasconcellos' number) full-time students.
That football is even in the running on a list of needs for a new full-time faculty member is astounding to me. How can the college even think about improving their sports program at this point (which I suspect already gets a lion's share of the money around that campus) and continue to call itself an academic institution?
Mr. Vasconcellos however, believes that the football field is "a classroom," a statement that had the whole audience round-eyed and giggling in disbelief.
(I don't hate football, I don't hate sports. If the college is going to spend more money on sports, then why not get themselves a decent soccer coach who can at least benefit the women at the college as well as the men. To spend one more dime on football when the women's program at the college is so dismal seems the height of chauvinism to me.)
Mr Vasconcellos says the deans used a set of criteria to make their decision that was fully approved by the faculty at the college. That may be so. But it seems to me then that the college has forgotten its mission in its hunger to take in money. If the college's No. 1 priority is growth (and I'm not sure that's a good thing) then it should have a far better long-term plan than the piddling amount a team of football players brings in every year. Athletics may have great growth potential for the college coffers, but what about the young men and women of this community (of 60 football players, only 19 are from this county) who need computer training, Spanish proficiency, agricultural skills and so much more?
The college will likely say that without the football team, and the revenues it generates, the college won't grow and survive.
I say the college needs to rethink its priorities and demonstrate a little vision, creativity and serious responses to the real needs of local people.
Copyright MPFA 1999
Permission granted to excerpt or use this article if source is cited
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