Where does our money go?

Since I am not a current student on main or any UNM campus, I began my research for this blog in the Daily Lobo archives. I found an article dated September 5th that describes to student where their fees end up in the university. There was a pie chart that gave a breakdown of everything; the top three fees went to a faculty fee, the student health center, and ITS. Upon further reading there was a debate about whether or not athletics should get a student fee. According to the article, UNM students do not have it “that bad” when it comes to paying for athletic fees. Schools like Utah State pay a $53 fee where we pay a mere $36. The end of the article touched on the fact that tuition never pays for athletics and “never has and never will”.
First of all I want to mention how the students have no say in where their fees go. It is all left up to a board who decides what they think out fees would be best for. I would like to see a questionnaire go out to all students to see what they want (since we are the ones using the University Purposes and services). At lest that way the board would know what we all think. Now, I will move on to the athletics.

I am sports fan, however I think that UNM already spends too much on athletics to begin with, not all of them however get fair funding. An article from April 4th 2007, explains that our past tuition increase is to go to things like an increase in faculty salary, hiring minority faculty and establishing a department of international diversity. These things sound great right? Well now I will quote an article from March 26th that says that the newly hired basketball coach will earn $975,000 a year and his assistant will earn $250,000 for a total of $1,225,000. This is ridiculous compared to the $590,000 coach McKay and his assistant made combined, which is also ridiculous. These men are faculty so therefore we are paying them with our tuition increase, which the first article said tuition never pays for. The faculty of athletics counts as athletics therefore the quote from Curt Porter who is the VP of the fee board that tuition won’t go to athletics is a flat out lie. The current basketball coach makes more then the president of the United States and our team isn’t even good anymore! Now our tuition is paying for the coaches, although I’m sure the soccer, hockey, track etc. coaches are not making nearly this much.
So maybe our fees are to pay for new equipment and upkeep of the facilities, however, our amazing track coaches quit because the board would not give them money to upkeep the track. I had the privilege of working with both coach Henrys in high school before they moved to UNM and they are amazing men and know their stuff, but none of the money we pay in fees went to them. Why do I have the feeling it went to basketball and football? The reason I am told that these two sports get the most of the money is that they are big income bringers to UNM, however attendance at these two sports was at a low last year.

My overall view of all of this is that we are being lied to, which I don’t find surprising. Our fees are going to help one or two athletic departments while the others are left to fare for themselves in fundraisers. Our tuition increase goes to pay the basketball faculty ridiculous amounts of money, and we have no say in any of it. I would like to see us start deciding these things, not a board. For one, our money would go where the students want it, and two, the university boards and heads would know what we want for once. I don’t mind my fees to pay for athletics, I would just like to see it spread evenly or distributed between sports that I choose. Tuition increases to pay for faculty are okay too, but again I would like to choose the faculty departments that my money goes to. I don’t want to pay for basketball or football; I want to pay for hockey and soccer and rugby; I don’t what to pay the basketball coaches; I want to pay the Philosophy and English departments. It’s our money so I think we should have the final decision, or at least a say, in where it goes.