Considering the GAF
An antagonistic relationship seems to have formed between the general student body and student-athletes, with the prior feeling exploited, and the latter feeling misunderstood.Maybe it’s because I’m the antithesis of a student-athlete, but that feeling doesn’t seem unreasonable to me. Most of the General Activity Fund (GAF) hike money is going to the athletic department.
College has gotten prohibitively expensive, and most students already take on a significant amount of debt, but what does that money get us? USD is a competitively priced school, that’s one of our greatest strengths.
Athletic events don’t really interest me, but I’m glad the university offers them for the people who like watching sports and for the athletes who love the game. Even so, why is more than 70 percent of my GAF funding going to a department I don’t really care about?
There’s something of an escalation going on with college athletics constantly trying to get the newest, and most impressive athletic facilities and largest staffs. None of those things come for free, they are paid for by either the students (in the case of GAF increases) or by using state funds. Those facilities and people all cost a significant amount of money.
The athletic department has bloat, including both frivolous matters as well as programs that don’t get the proper funding or attention they deserve. Where I would argue offering cost of attendance scholarships only to athletes is unfair to the student body as a whole, we have plenty of teams that don’t get the support they deserve.
If athletics are worth so much time and money, it seems a bit unfair that the football team would need more coaches when they already have more paid coaches than men and women’s cross country (one), softball (two), men and women’s swimming and diving (two) and volleyball (two) combined.
That does change when counting graduate assistants and volunteer coaches, but those titles imply significantly less than a coaching roster that includes “Defensive Quality Control” as a single member of a staff, listed second to last. If I’m going to give them that benefit of the doubt, let’s also consider the fact that football alone has 14 employees listed on the same website with no denotation of volunteer to be found.
In a previous interview with the Volante, athletic director David Herbster was excited to be hiring a full-time camera person because it “is really going to help us be more of a D-I school.”Does having custom Coyote weight plates make our education or college experience any better? No. Does it feel like a waste of money? It sure does.Many college students have to pick and choose how they budget their money – we can’t just say that people are going to suddenly give us more. That money means groceries, it means medication, it means rent, it means gas to visit family.
The frustration isn’t about disliking other students, it’s about losing value and having more nonexistent money come from our wallets.
Smith is a member of College Democrats and the Political Science League.
