Millersville track cancellation contrary to state policy and may cost it millions

In the February 7th press release announcing the formation of the Wonderling Panel, Governor Corbett repeated an important message from his budgetary address, “We need to have a thorough, public and candid conversation about how best to deal with the spiraling costs and our own obligations.” Part of the mission of the panel, according to the press release, “is to evaluate trends . . . . how higher education can increase collaboration with the private sector.”

The Governor’s call that the state’s higher education system better collaborate with the private sector in this era of rising costs and tight budgets is not being heeded at Millersville University.

A week after the Wonderling Panel was formed, state-owned Millersville University, announced it would discontinue men’s indoor and outdoor track and field and cross country. Citing “diminishing budget dollars” for the discontinuation of the three sports, Aminta Breaux, Millersville’s Vice President of Student Affairs, claimed that by making these cuts the University will “realize approximately $200,000 in savings.” The University’s press release stated that the three programs would not be reinstated even if the public raised $200,000. Instead, it insisted that for the programs to continue “an endowment of $4 million would need to be established.”

The reaction to the proposed cuts by stakeholders like student-athletes, former and current coaches, and alumni was immediate and critical. The late date of the announcement, near the end of the indoor track season, left team members in the lurch, uncertain about their athletic and academic futures. Stakeholders blindsided by the announcement criticized the lack of transparency and consultation during the decision-making process. Former coaches and alumni familiar with the programs’ nuts and bolts challenged the administration’s cost estimates, claiming the costs of the programs and the size of the requisite endowment were exaggerated.

But stakeholder reactions were also constructive and creative. Student-athletes, alumni, and former coaches formed a group – the Coalition to Rescue Our Sports or CROS – to find short- and long-term funding for the three sports. Consistent with the Governor’s call for collaboration between the public higher education and the private sector, CROS found short-term funding from alumni that would have allowed pared-down versions of the three sports to operate for several years. In addition to this stop gap funding, CROS asked Millersville to work cooperatively and creatively with it, to create an endowment large enough to fund the sports permanently.

Millersville has not only refused to reinstate the three programs with the hundreds of thousands of dollars that CROS raised from alumni, it has refused to work cooperatively with the group to create the endowment that the University claimed was needed for the sports to continue. Indeed, both the University’s President Francine McNairy and Breaux have refused to meet with CROS.

Although Millersville’s Vice President for University Advancement, Gerald Eckert, who sits on the Wonderling Panel, met with CROS, the McNairy administration rejected CROS’s proposals.

The McNairy administration’s refusal of stop gap funding that would have allowed the programs to continue has generated backlash that may cost the school millions. There are reports that frustrated alumni have already removed donative clauses from wills that would have bequeathed monies to the school. Other alumni have threatened to ask that unused monies they donated earlier be returned. Still others have threatened not to give monies to the school in the future.

Rather than working with CROS to create a new model for private funding of intercollegiate athletics in an era of rising costs and tight budgets, Millersville refuses to consider any option but cuts. This is inconsistent with the Wonderling Panel’s approach to educational funding.

Millersville’s unwillingness to think outside-the box is also inconsistent with the Wonderling Panel’s goal of “examin[ing] how to make higher education affordable . . . as well as fair to the taxpayers of Pennsylvania.” Because most of the funding of Millersville athletics comes from student activity fees, private funding of athletics could be used to reduce those fees. Private funding would also allow the University to allocate the state monies it received elsewhere.

At the first meeting of the Wonderling Panel on March 12, the Governor asked the panel where it would “find the money.” For Millersville, the answer is “from alumni.” But it isn’t listening.