Editorial: Increasing General Activity Fee should benefit everyone

As college students are well aware of, education isn’t affordable. So when the proposal for added fees to every student comes into question, we should all take notice.

Last Wednesday, SGA hosted a forum to discuss a potential rise in students’ general activity fees. The discussion focused on athletics and how they’re currently underfunded.

When making the comparison to other schools in USD’s division, we’re the most recent additions to Missouri Valley Conference, joining the ranks of the best collegiate teams in the country. Although on paper we’re equivalent to these schools, we definitely aren’t. Perhaps we’ll earn higher prestige in the future, but charging every student, even students who have no interest whatsoever in athletics, won’t solve anything.

In reality, sports don’t earn USD much money. According to NCAA finances curated by “USA Today,” in the 2014 school year alone, the university made a profit of about $100,000 after spending a whopping $14.8 million. We subsidize 10 percent more on sports than SDSU, and they still earn $1.5 million more. We even spend more than NDSU, who has been winning the NCAA Division I Football Championship for five years straight.

More money isn’t going to encourage athletes to play better or more students to attend sporting events. Sports are simply not interesting to most people, especially millennials.
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Statistics from Bloomberg show that people aged 18-24 are the least interested in sports. USD’s athletic department can’t make people care and they shouldn’t try. Rather than forcing every student to pay more fees, athletics should charge more for the tickets and concessions they sell, specifically targeting those who are actively attending athletic events.

Sports are a great way to reach out to the Vermillion community to connect with USD on common ground, or turf. If community members constitute a significant portion of attendees at games, why not ask the community for some athletic funding? Simply put, it’s much easier to tax students. Even USD alumni may benefit from supporting athletics, but relying on this demographic is a risky investment when these people already have student debt to consider.

The Washington Post found big-name universities choosing to phase out their athletic fees altogether to decrease the burden of debt. USD athletics don’t necessarily have that luxury, but they also don’t have the right to see students as walking checkbooks, especially those who never attend a game by choice or because they’re working to pay for the fees attached to it.

When an increased GAF comes into play, everybody is affected, including other student organizations on campus. The “investment in ourselves,” according to athletic director David Herbster, benefits athletics and not much else beyond that.

Increasing the GAF strictly for athletics gives off the impression that athletics are the core reason prospective students choose USD. Maybe more athletic funds will inspire greater numbers of applicants, but applicants may not even receive acceptance and if they do, their role on campus may teeter on athletics over other aspects of USD, such as quality academics and organizations.

If we want the reputation we deserve, we should highlight these other areas and market ourselves as a university valuing intellect. Athletics may draw more students in, but education will keep them here.

Although student turnout to the initial GAF forum was low, everybody should care about what their fees go toward. If USD wants to tax every student, the money should support programs that benefit everybody.

Athletics aren’t and never will be something everyone at USD can enjoy. Let’s use this opportunity to speak up to put our resources into making the USD experience better for everyone, not just a select number of individuals.

Correction at 7 p.m.: GAF stands for General Activity Fee. The headline of a previous version of this article said it stood for General Activity Fund. GAF funding also did not partially fund the building of the Sanford Coyote Sports Center as was stated in a previous caption of the photo on this article.