The intermittently dormant “Faculty Budget Forum,” a listserv established during the (last) financial crisis of 2008-9 as a place for faculty to exchange concerns and ideas, lit up this weekend with an exchange about Intercollegiate Athletics. If ever there was a time to dissolve Intercollegiate Athletics, some suggested, this surely must be it. The campus faces an escalating debt of $340m and savage cuts are imminent. Surely academic programs should have priority over Intercollegiate Athletics, which has long been a drain on the central campus coffers.
Professor of the Graduate School Brian Barsky, longtime informal “inspector general” of Intercollegiate Athletics finances, supplied the BFA with the latest figures as they stood before Covid-19. Debt service on Memorial Stadium is $18m annually—but in 2032, we must start paying down the principal as well as the interest, and payments will rise to as much as $37m a year. The campus is liable for this debt with or without IA—and perhaps we’re better off without. Consider this: according to the most recent statement of revenues and expenditures, Intercollegiate Athletics (IA) spent $100.7m on operating expenses while generating $87.5m (not including direct institutional support and student fees)—a net operating loss of $13.2m. Even football by itself showed a loss of close to $1m. And this statement may not even reflect other associated costs, such as the $4.75m settlement of the wrongful death of Ted Agu.
Director of Athletics, Jim Knowlton, estimates that Covid-19 will bring an additional revenue loss of $50m this year. The campus has to face a choice – academics or athletics. If we dissolve athletics, a few alumni will scream. But there will be a lot of screaming from other quarters when classes are cut, when our core teaching staff begin to be laid off, when students continue pay the high cost of tuition for deteriorating education in a precarious labor market. Who will scream loudest? Whose screaming counts the most?
Michael Burawoy and Celeste Langan for the Board of the Berkeley Faculty Association.