To the Editor,
Graduate education requires rigorous study and academic training. That means that graduate students have little time to engage in the old extracurricular activities that we once loved. Yet, graduate students still have to pay the same general fee as undergraduates for campus programming that we do not use. The most objectionable component of this is intercollegiate athletics, because the vast majority of graduate students have little to no time or interest to invest in campus sporting events.
While college sports can be a big money maker, Ohio University athletics only raises $6.4 million from its ticket sales and donors, yet it spends nearly $15 million in operations. To make up the difference, Athletics is dependent on transfers and allocations from within the university, and most of the money comes the general fee — a $628 per semester fee charged to every student. The current general fee waiver for graduate students only reduces this fee by $134 per term — a far cry short of the Vision Ohio priorities outlined by the Provost in 2006, which called for a complete general fee buydown for graduate students by this point. After the $134 waiver, graduate students are still paying $494 out of pocket each semester. This is a financial burden for most graduate students, especially those with fellowships that make them ineligible for payment plans to budget the cost of graduate education. This also means that for some on OU’s campus, two paychecks each academic year are nearly cut in half by this mandatory fee, and if you ask any graduate student, they will tell you that $494 could buy a lot of groceries.
As a representative in Graduate Student Senate, some of my colleagues and I will be imploring university administrators to implement policy reform in these areas. Graduate students have to be an equal and valued partner on campus, and I ask that the total sum of the general fee be reduced for graduate students for the upcoming academic year, and any amount which remains be reapportioned to fund services we actually use. This is not to discourage graduate students from attending sporting events, but to allow those few who do to pay the actual costs, or for administration to institute an optional athletic fee within the general fee for graduate students. My goals are not lofty and my requests are not unreasonable, and should not be dismissed as such. Optional (or waived) athletic fees, in fact, are becoming more and more common around the country.
As I begin this endeavor, I ask the university community to lend us their support and begin a dialogue on campus — undergraduates, graduate students, administrators, faculty, staff and even Athletics, student athletes and the generous alumni who so ardently support our sports teams. Remember the mission of the university. Though that may differ slightly depending on whom you ask, we must make academics the foremost priority at OU. This is not accomplished by diverting the largest portion of the general fee to pay for six-figure coaching salaries while graduate students struggle to pay rent. For us, the prestige of Ohio University is manifest not on the shelves of Athletics’ trophy cabinet, but on those of Alden Library’s seventh floor, where theses and dissertations document the incredible research potential in Athens, or on the stages and in the galleries where our fine arts departments explore the human condition.
Our priorities, as in so many institutions across the nation, have been willfully manipulated in the last decades to value distractions over learning. It is time to reverse this trend.
Guy Aldridge is the History Department representative for Graduate Student Senate at Ohio University.
