Guildless.

To Whom It May Concern:

                We are writing to you on behalf of our concern for our football team and financial funding.  Both of us agree on the fact that all the money spent on a horrible football team is complete and total nonsense.  I sincerely hate to be this blunt, but our football team sucks, we(French_Party_Girl and Dammerung) are from the south and we practically worship the institution of football, and this team is pure blasphemy.   

                And yet, in light of this painful, depressing abuse of our finances and souls we, and we mean institution, continue to strip our academic fund to further defy all sanity and sense.  Ah, hell, in for a penny in for a dollar; since we are robbing from academics to pay for the football team, let’s go further and whore academics out on the corner.  Why not allow students who pay for a season ticket to the football games get an auto “A” in the class of their choice, and tailgating should be considered extra credit?  I mean if we want to water down our academic reputation let’s skip the middleman of slowly draining the funds from the classroom and just go straight to devaluating what the grades mean.  And at least this way; students can get a small measure of pleasure from their dollars fruitlessly flowing onto the cold hard facts of football in our State.  We will fully admit that if we could pay for an A in a class, like our finances given to this institution pay for a spot on the Division 1 lineup, we would do it in a heartbeat.  If getting a 4.0 were as easy as losing a football game, sign us up!

                Unfortunately there are a great number of kind souls who still believe in teaching and education in general and such an excellent proposition is probably just enough to finally drive them all the way past 5 O’clock happy hour and straight into the hard liquor.  To save them and their livers we have an alternative:  We keep our hapless shrine to futility and just move the campus so that it encircles the football field so at least the students can effectively use the copious amounts of parking around the stadium that currently goes un-used because it’s so far from the classrooms.  This also benefits both our Division 1A Football Participants and our students.  Everyone can agree more available parking is a plus, and this way our stadium is physically as well as financially the center of our University.

                No, no…. we should probably stop there.  Despite still feeling immense reservoirs of emotion for this subject it is time to be constructive.  So we have a request and a suggestion. 

What is the strategic reasoning behind pulling the funds from the University Academic budget to shore up a football team that no one watches?  It is unlikely that Our School will ever be among the powerhouses of football and it is only the most prominent programs that make any kind of profit off of football.  If we are so eager to be good at a sport why not pick one where it’s likely that we could become known for it?  We recognize that there might, somehow, be possibly a reason for this that makes sense.  We just want to know what it is.

Why not take that money and invest it in efforts to improve the scholastic standing of our university?  Maybe further opportunities for our nursing and medical programs; or more funding for the engineering labs, capstones, and internships?  Family housing on campus in a large part looks like a refugee camp, we could refit those perhaps?  Or stop taking the money from academics and take a page from West Virginia’s book and sell alcohol at the games as a fund raiser.  Heaven knows the tailgaters have enough drink just outside the stadium to drown a fish; it’s not like anyone going to the game isn’t being exposed to the liquid we toast so proudly in our fight song.

                Anything is better than depriving our University of funds for actually teaching.

                Lovingly full of concern,

                French_Party_Girl and Dammerung

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This was submitted as an opinion piece to my school newspaper.  It sadly didn't get published.