ASUI voted 12-to-1 Wednesday to table a resolution expressing concern for the current financial state of the University of Idaho’s department of athletics, citing further revisions to be made.
The resolution was drafted by UI student Zachary Lien and sponsored by Sens. Jordan Kizer, Catherine Yenne and George Wood.
Lien said he wrote the resolution after discovering about 62 percent of the 1,362 UI students he surveyed believed athletics was profitable without subsidies, when it is at a deficit of about $1 million.
The resolution asked UI to pursue a more honest, transparent role with its discussions of the department’s fiscal activities and to reconsider its “excessive” funding request cap from the Idaho State Board of Education (SBOE) to correct the deficit.
Lien said he hoped these goals would help close the gap between perception and reality among the UI student population, so they could make more informed decisions about the future of athletics.
During the open forum, ASUI Funding Board Chair Lauren McKinney said the resolution drives a wedge between athletes and all other students, which ASUI Director of Athletics Ethan McIhargey echoed.
Both said the resolution should not be passed because of its clear implications for UI.
Lien said the resolution does not harm student athletes, but rather benefits them. He said his survey found that student athletes were the least aware of how large a deficit UI athletics is operating at.
Lien said by getting the budget under control, it will help athletes in non-revenue sports, like swimming and golf. He accepted responsibility for his lack of clarity on some points of his report, but fiscal responsibility will help student athletes, he said.
Lien suggested the best move might be to suspend debate on the resolution for the time being in order to revise it to reflect new information he received since publishing his report.
After Lien’s remarks, UI Vice President of Finance Brian Foisy said UI will no longer ask for $4 million to correct the deficit over a four-year period from SBOE, and the university has reduced the initial request to $950,000 for a single year.
Foisy said UI needs to reduce department budgets gradually because of the impact on students, faculty and staff.
“This may be a legitimate complaint of government, but we can’t turn on a dime,” Foisy said.
He said there is not one department on campus that is profitable and everything done on campus is subsidized. Foisy encouraged ASUI to take a look at the materials going to SBOE.
“I mean this sincerely, please come see me. It’s my job. It’s my career. It’s my integrity,” Foisy said. “My door is always open … I will make time for you.”
ASUI Lobbyist Michael Ryan said he commended Foisy on his remarks and implored the senate to send the resolution back to committee.
“We can do better,” Ryan said.
ASUI President Cruz Botello said it was clear that revisions need to be made.
Kizer moved to table the resolution when it came time for the senate to debate its content. He said the resolution should not be killed, but revised with the new information heard at Wednesday’s meeting.
Kizer said the issue is not with athletics, but with the university’s lack of transparency, and the resolution should reflect that more.
ASUI Pro Tempore Mattie Cupps disagreed with Kizer and said the focus needed to be put on the students’ lack of education because she believes UI has always been transparent and honest in disclosing its budgetary process.
ASUI Sen. Nina Rydalch, who writes for The Argonaut, said the resolution should be killed and the senate should start over.
Ultimately, the senate agreed to table it for the time being and to send the resolution back to committee.
Olivia Heersink can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @heersinkolivia
Ryan
Imagine this: You walk into class and your professor says, “Test time! You've been randomly assigned to a group of 6. Some random student from your group will take your test, and that person's score will count for all members of the group.” Think this method will poorly represent what you know? If so, you should view the so-called Lein report with skepticism. The text, written by junior Zachary Lein, purports to represent what all UI students know about athletics budgets. But fewer than 1 in 6 (about 15%) of the people he emailed responded. Even if he emailed all UI students (and no evidence of this is presented), 15% of any group shouldn’t speak for everyone. There are more limitations to his paper: misleading survey questions, an incomplete understanding of the relevant literature, and an inappropriate desire to generalize the conclusions, for starters. But the bottom line is clear: Lein's work is substantially flawed and should not be used to drive decision-making at any level. The ASUI decision on April 13th to table a resolution expressing concern about the athletics budget is a tacit acknowledgement of this. But based on the limitations of Lein’s work, the resolution should be wholly and finally rejected.
Zachary Lien
Ryan-- for the record, a 15% response rate for undergraduate students is significantly above the average for the UI Communications and Marketing Department. In fact, 15% response rate among large populations is considered incredibly large. There are academically rigorous surveys of only a few thousand people done to represent countries with populations in the tens of millions. Your analogy is also incredibly misleading. In your analogy, the 15% response rate is by design, while my design could--theoretically--have resulted in 8975 responses. As for the Literature-- if you have criticisms of "incomplete understanding," I would encourage you to share something that shows incomplete understanding. My research on the literature is the results of over 50 hours of research and correspondence with a professor of Sports Management at the University of Memphis. If you are going to make the claim of "incomplete understanding," then you better demonstrate that claim. This principle applies to "misleading survey questions." Can you specify which questions were misleading and how? Finally, if you want proof that 8795 students were emailed, you can ask either me or ITS, who would easily have record that I emailed 8975 students. Moving forward: When I make claims, I elaborate on their veracity to the best of my understanding, and, in the case of my report, I supplied extensive footnotes. If you are to continue to make claims, I would ask that you elaborate on your points and supply sources-- especially when you claim "incomplete understanding."
Ryan
I appreciate the response of Mr. Zachary Lien, the writer of the investigation at the center of this ASUI resolution. My criticisms aren’t necessarily about “proof,” as he puts it. Rather, it’s about designing a study that more adequately measures what this study purports to: UI student understandings and opinions about Athletic Department revenue sources and costs. I hope that these comments are taken constructively, as my sincere intent is to create space for a transparent conversation about Intercollegiate Athletics at UI that accurately represents the voices of this program’s many stakeholders. So, allow me to address some specific concerns. Regarding my comments about the response rate, 15% for the sample size might be appropriate. Good, even. But the report offers no discussion of this point. Sure, UI Communications and Marketing might be thrilled with that response rate, but when we talk about representativeness in statistical research, other standards apply. Further, what groups received recruitment emails—undergraduates, graduate students, dual-credit students, students at UI campuses other than Moscow? And why did you choose to email certain groups rather than others? This rationale of sampling didn’t appear in the report, yet it is vital to understanding just how representative this work is of UI students in general. Similar issues obtain when we look at who did, in fact, respond. Let’s grant that the number of responses and the response rate is good. How representative of the larger sample group are the respondents? That is, in what ways do the people who actually completed the survey accurately represent the demographic and other characteristics of the larger population? EVERY survey has sampling error. What’s the error for this one? If the researcher’s not sure, that should be acknowledged. My point is, the limitations of any survey (or research method) should be adequately disclosed so that researchers aren’t making claims the data simply do not support. Another part of the research design that troubles me is the use of the word “profit.” Lien’s survey focuses on the term “profit,” despite no evidence in his narrative that this precise word was used by UI Athletics Department staff or administration. Asking respondents, then, about their perceptions of “profitabil[ity]” of the UI Athletics Department is inappropriate. Yes, many UI stakeholders have spoken of “return on investment” (former President Tim White is cited in the report saying as much) and the “money the [Athletics] [D]epartment brings to the [U]niversity.” But the presumed equivalency between these expressions and “profit” is troubling. Lien specifically uses this term in the survey and the following report to mean money accrued over and above costs. Not only do UI stakeholders avoid that term (see p. 7-8 in Lien’s work for discussion), this specific usage also isn’t clearly defined for survey respondents, who may have different interpretations of what the word means in this context. In short, it’s unclear why Lien chose the word “profit.” This raises the concern that the survey isn’t accurately measuring what it tries to: student beliefs about Athletic Department financial circumstances. It’s not hard to imagine relatively-informed respondents assuming that profit meant, more generally, money that comes back to the University, rather than money over and above any and all costs. But because “profit” wasn’t operationally defined in the survey—as well as the fact that “profit” isn’t (and wasn’t) a term used by the Athletic Department or other stakeholders to refer to the Department’s standing—it’s unclear how many respondents defined this term differently than Lien. The difference between what respondents took “profit” to mean and what Lien presumes it means complicates the trustworthiness of this project. But even if the term “profit” had been avoided or defined for survey respondents, the representation of the breakdown in student fees, as well as the questions not asked as part of that representation, warrants attention. If we grant that Lien’s breakdown of per-student, per-semester dedicated fees is accurate (a direct source isn’t provided in the report, and what documentation I could locate didn’t easily distinguish fees from tuition), it’s worth noting how the data are presented. The amount that each of nineteen groups receives from dedicated student fees is presented on a bar graph, which on the horizontal axis goes from $0 to $120. The visual message is clear: Intercollegiate Athletics receives more money than any of the other 19 groups (although, it should be noted, that Student Government is close behind). And this image is directly above the following question: “[D]o you believe that student fees to Intercollegiate Athletics should increase, decrease, or stay the same?” Given this presentation, it’s not surprising that 68.3% of Lien’s respondents said they’d reduce the amount of fees paid to Intercollegiate Athletics. But it’s worth considering how this presentation predisposed respondents to answer that way. To assess whether this presentation lead participants to that specific response, it’s useful to think about alternative presentations and whether or not those alternatives were likely to garner the same results. Think about what these data would have looked like on a pie chart, where each of the nineteen organizations were presented as taking a percentage of the roughly $525 pie. Consider how many students would have changed their responses about funding when they see, for example, that about 22% of their fees go to Intercollegiate Athletics. And imagine that amount was next to the wedge that showed student government received almost the same percentage as Intercollegiate Athletics. Responses may have been similar given this alternate presentation. But the point is the pie chart presentation would have put all fees into a relationship not just with one another but with the overall amount paid in fees, which would appear less leading and more neutral. In a similar vein, asking additional questions could have helped Lien control for biases in the way he represented information. It can feel a little like a set up, for example, to present fees for intercollegiate athletics as the longest line on the bar graph, then to ask questions about whether or not fees dedicated to athletics should be increased. It might feel less like a set up if Lien also asked about other dedicated fee-funded activities, like student government, the Commons/Pittman Center, or the marching band. While I understand that Lien’s research wasn’t interested in these questions, they would provide some perspective and context for the data Lien did want. That is, additional questions would potentially offer some way of understanding which responses were a direct reaction to the presentation of the data and which ones accurately represented respondent views relative to the funding of Intercollegiate Athletics at UI. And finally, when asking whether student fees allocated to Intercollegiate Athletics should change, the question fails to indicate what that change would mean. To be more direct, the audience of the question is left to assume or guess at the results of changing the amount of dedicated fees received by the Athletic Department. Would decreased fees for athletics mean lower fees for students, or rather that those fees are reallocated to other areas (say, student government)? Would an increased allocation for Intercollegiate Athletics mean less money for other areas, or higher cost of attendance? Further, what might those increased funds be spent on? Balancing the budget and maintaining current programs (including swimming and diving and an FBS football team)? Adding new facilities, such as improved concessions stands within the Kibbie Dome? These are only hypothetical examples. But my point is that asking respondents about changing funding for any organization without a clear idea about what that change might mean is incomplete at best and misleading at worst. There are further points worth discussing, but I think you get the idea. Please don’t misunderstand me. My purpose here isn’t to pick on the author or muddy the waters. Rather, it’s to clarify the methodology by which this work was conducted, and use that discussion of methodology to inform the discussion of the trustworthiness of the report’s claims. My hope is that any discussions regarding athletics on the UI campus proceed with transparency and the inclusion of as many stakeholder groups as possible: Student-athletes, students, faculty, staff, administrators, business and community leaders, alumni, and others. This report and the subsequent discussion can be used to underscore just how important it is to get the best information possible to guide decision making. If we want to REALLY know what UI students think about how the Athletic Department is funded and their role in that funding, great. Let’s work together to design a study that will measure, as accurately as possible, those perceptions. But given the limitations I’ve laid out above, Lien’s work is not that study.