Admission fee again for sports events

[www.cornellsun.com]

>>> For the past decade, it has been a Cornell tradition that all students are granted free admission to all athletic events excluding men's hockey games and playoff contests. However, this will all change in the fall of 2006, as the Athletics Department will be charging a nominal fee for entrance to select sporting events for undergraduates in order to recoup money lost from not receiving byline funding from the Student Assembly after missing the proposal deadline.

Will this boost revenues enough to make up for the even-emptier stands?

Story says it will be $2 or $3 up to $5 for events that are currently free.

After they pay the additional staff to administer this fee, how much do they realistically expect to make? They'll drive even more people away from sports like football and lacrosse.

In the bast Athletics has bullied the SA into providing funding with threats that they'd do something like this. Year after year, the SAFC would take a chunk of the student activity fee away from student groups and funnel it to athletics.

This year though the boneheads in athletics missed the deadline? Maybe they run in the red because they are idiots. What other deadlines have they missed? Why should anyone donate to athletics when they are this irresponsible? They can't even get to the point of bullying this year!

Wrestling will probably still be free...

Sigh. Athletics is stupid.

Liz '05
Sigh. Athletics is stupid.

And, just in case we might possibly forget, they pull out all the stops to remind us every chance they get.

So I just read the article. Noel will turn down 100k+ b/c there is a stipulation he has to give 10% of it to club sports in order to charge $3 for students to go to sporting events that they will just stop going to? Just plain ridiculous. There is no way they are gonna make up the 100k on the fees at the gate of these events. Also, knowing several club athletes, I give the SA a lot of respect for adding that stipulation in there.

Good. This gets rid of any guilt I'll have in sneaking in to as many athletics contests I can for the forseeable future.

RichH
Good. This gets rid of any guilt I'll have in sneaking in to as many athletics contests I can for the forseeable future.

You seriously felt guilty about this before?

Jacob 03

RichH
Good. This gets rid of any guilt I'll have in sneaking in to as many athletics contests I can for the forseeable future.

You seriously felt guilty about this before?

That's future tense. And I have been a sport and paid for some tickets in recent years. Now the gloves are off.

Double post.

Random thought: If they insist on charging admission, they ought to make it so that you can swipe your id and get charged later and/or return to a coupon book system. People don't carry much cash when you don't even need it to eat out in C-town. Why would they stop at the ATM to pick up cash for a sporting event?

Sounds like this is part ego problem: "That's simply not going to happen. We are struggling to meet our own requirements," he [Noel] said. "Certain things are just a reality. We're not going to accept a mandate to give 10 percent of our income to anybody."

Part incompetence: "The Athletics Department has been denied byline funding by the S.A. after missing the proposal deadline."

And part simple stupidity: "We gave up revenue to do this because we care about the students..." said Cornell Athletics Director Andy Noel.

Liz '05
Random thought: If they insist on charging admission, they ought to make it so that you can swipe your id and get charged later and/or return to a coupon book system. People don't carry much cash when you don't even need it to eat out in C-town. Why would they stop at the ATM to pick up cash for a sporting event?

Well, in my day you could buy season football tickets just like season hockey tickets, only they were really cheap and easy to come by.

It's generational: Maybe students who don't go to as many sports events are working out themselves rather than sitting in the stands drinking Annie Green Springs, Boone's Farm, Spanada, Cold Duck (Red Duck?), Bartyls and James, and Zima. (God, what ways to poison yourself.) I love seeing all those exercise machines in Teagle for students.

Doesn't seem like a bad idea to allocate 10% of funding to club sports. OTOH I'm suspicious from my undergraduate days of anything done by Cornell student government about equally as much as I'm suspicious of anything done by Day Hall or the athletics administration. Even if I don't think of myself as an anarchist ...

Skorton, the new president, seems to be a fitness buff or at least interested in fitness and well-being (he's also a vegetarian) ... but he's also president of a Big Ten (Big Twelve now?) university. Wonder if any of this catches his attention?

Out of curiosity, does anyone know/is anyone willing to volunteer how much club athletes from various sports pay in dues to play at Cornell?

billhoward
... but he's also president of a Big Ten (Big Twelve now?) university...

Big Eleven.

The Sun took the SA to task for this today: [media.www.cornellsun.com]

Apparently the way athletics bullied the SA in the past has been quickly forgotten. The proposed solution is actually pretty reasonable but really difficult to budget, especially the way the SA handles money.

Another aspect of all this is that many, many club sports are factioning into A and B talent-level squads, and each of these is now applying for SAFC funding. Just from observation, I can tell you that these A and B squads practice together, socialize together, and are essentially the same team--just broken up so that they can double their SAFC taking power. The number of student groups applying for funding this year rose by--what, 100?--this year alone, and that comes at the expense of older groups because all SAFC funding comes from a pool of money that doesn't change size. A little administrative control on how many women's under-20 over-18 backwards-only figure skating teams are allowed to exist and claim funding could go a long way in saving everybody some money.