(Cross-posted from The Free Speech Zone)
Hofstra University, which has fielded a football team for the past 69 years, is dropping the sport.
The school said it cut the program because of costs and fading interest and will use the $4.5 million spent annually on the team on scholarships and other priorities.
The board of trustees voted unanimously Wednesday night to shut the program, which had been in existence since the Long Island school’s founding in 1937. The coaching staff was told Thursday morning, sources told ESPN.com.
Hofstra, which has competed in the NCAA’s Football Championship Subdivision (formerly known as Division I-AA) since 1991, is the second member of the Colonial Athletic Association to drop its football program in the past 10 days. Northeastern University, in Boston, announced Nov. 23 it was dropping its program after 74 seasons.
“The cost of the football program, now and in the future, far exceeds the return possible,” Hofstra president Stuart Rabinowitz said Thursday. He added that despite Hofstra having sent several players to the NFL, the program does not attract enough national attention.
“Given that, along with the low level of interest, financial support and attendance among our students, our alumni and the community, the choice was painful, but clear.”
Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Raheem Morris, who played at Hofstra from 1994-97, called the move a “sad state of affairs.”
“It was weird because it kind of happened out of nowhere,” he said.
No, sadly, it didn’t just “happen out of nowhere” and we’re all holding our fucking breaths that the money is gonna be used on academics. In fact, why do we need more money for academics? What the fuck are you spending our tuition on?!?!
Let’s go back, before the financial collapse, shall we?
Hempstead: Hofstra to Get a New Medical School
Published: October 16, 2007
Hofstra University plans to open a medical school on the Hempstead campus, university officials said yesterday. The university will operate the school in partnership with some of the 15 hospitals of the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, said Stu Vincent, a university spokesman. The university said it would be the first medical school to open in New York since 1963. Mr. Vincent said university and hospital officials were scheduled to officially announce the opening today and would provide more details about the new school at that time.
Yeah, put it on our tab!
What the media didn’t cover was the fact that we built one more HUGE dorm building before the economic collapse. In fact, they made sure to finish the dorm quick, before Fall 2007 started. Add that to the stupid fucking signs (at $4K a piece) they bought after the economy kicked the bucket, then charge up the shit that got put on our University Black Card (funded by our tuition) to make the campus all pretty for the Presidential Debates and we got ourselves a few questions.
Classes required for seniors to graduate allow for only 20 students, there are two of the same classes given so 40 students can take the one class. Yeah, you’re reading that right.
So how about some math?
Faculty (including librarians): There are 1,193 faculty members of whom 544 are full-time.
Student-faculty ratio is 14 to 1.
544 full-time faculty with a 14 to 1 ratio is roughly 7616 students, but around 8,323 students go to school at Hofstra. Part-time faculty teaches introductory courses and the 544 are used to take care of higher level courses. However, those “higher level” courses can be taken by those who aren’t seniors. So a senior needs to ask to be signed into a class and if that can’t be done…then fuck you have a nice ‘nother year at full tuition.
The tuition keeps going up, the classes get smaller and infrequent (“periodically” is an inside joke amongst students when others ask us when a class they need to graduate gets taught), but yet we still don’t have enough money despite the anal raping of the student body for every penny.
So in November of this year, by the :::ahem!::: suggestion of a few seniors, the students made a demand alongside faculty of having more transparency regarding the University’s budget:
Our story begins when we identified, through past campaigns and petitions, a feeling shared by a majority of students that there is an inadequate amount of information available regarding the current spending of the University tuition and fees. Our original intent was to demand that the University produce an itemized budget for all investors (i.e. tuition payers) to view. But in researching the issue, we learned that according to the administration, such a budget is already available. We were then instructed to contact Katherine Hennessy, Acting Vice President for Financial Affairs and Treasurer for the University, in order to obtain a copy of this public budget. Upon contacting her office, we learned she would not be available to meet and supply us with the budget information for six weeks. We see half of a semester as an unacceptable amount of time to wait for a budget labeled public.
As student investors, it is our undeniable right to have immediate access to the University’s budget. We are not customers but stakeholders, and as such, are wholly within our rights to demand a full understanding of how funds are allocated. The University’s mission statement wisely includes the call for students to be “critical, analytical and curious” and compels us to have a strong commitment to “personal and social responsibility.” Therefore, it is essential that the University cultivate an environment of shared governance.
We demand that the University make the budget readily available to all students, professors and other investors alike via a mass publication or through the University’s website. The current level of budget transparency is insufficient and unacceptable.
Apparently the “transparency in the budget” thing proposed by some guy back in the day has become a weapon used against the University Administration now 🙂
Right now it looks as if the budget is gonna be released by the administration to the students, faculty, and anyone who wants it. The faculty is with the students and they have no choice now. The budget is gonna show all the expenses from the time Stuart Rabinowitz became President until now.
Then, today, they cut football.
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becomes and epic fail.
Dibs on the poly sci building!
Why do you think they had the Presidential debates there?
Think about where they are logistically in terms of the county.
One of the more interesting “setups” of my career at Sun was very carefully orchestrated at Hofstra. Except it was interesting… the hardware guy who was just supposed to swap in a GBIC on a failing array, who instead played “52 pickup” with the drives in the arrays after I left for the day, got caught by the person I escalated the call to, and was fired.
Ever been in their machine room?
They are pwned. Well and truly. Lock, stock and barrel.
Talk about not wanting to catch a cold. Heh. Heh heh.