Seems to me it should have just been athletics. Let it sink or swim on what it’s truly intended for.Originally Posted by Blue Dawg
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Seems to me it should have just been athletics. Let it sink or swim on what it’s truly intended for.
At a lot of universities, and I would think this means the majority of mid-majors, asking students to pony up more money for anything no matter how worthy is a tough sell these days. Especially if it is for something they don't use/aren't interested in personally. While successful athletics can increase donations on the academic side, most people don't know or realize that. Couple with the fact that we have put a boring product on the field for a couple of years, and the way the athletic deparment has made it more of a pain than a pleasure on the students in recent years I am not surprised it didn't pass. (not that it hasn't been a pain to be a Tech fan/alum for a long time)
I teach highly motivated, upper middle class to wealthy HS seniors and I will say without hesitation, kids today are more concerned with where they are going to college based on cost than anytime in my 21 years of teaching and that includes a lot of the wealthy as well.
I agree whole heartedly on this line of thinking -
Treat it like a capital campaign at a church
Clearly spell out the benefits and additions on the athletics side - and I mean clearly define the improvements per sport
Transparency and clear - also include in that what each additional PEER/conference member school already has in place - regardless of how cheap it makes us look currently
Peel back the layers to expose the true core and state of the program
Also show the amounts that have been contribute by donors on all capital projects for athletics - whether big or small for the past decade - so there is none of this LET THE BOOSTERS PAY FOR IT...
This isn't rocket science but we are afraid to truly show that we are much closer to McNeese than we are North Texas
''Don't be a bad dagh..."
UTA just had a fee proposal fail. It wasn't for athletics, was meant to vamp up the student center and it lost a close one. Adding fees is a hard sell right now (it was a pretty big jump I thought).
A $5 per term thing passed easily - to make the campus more "green." Pretty easy sell, it's in line with student values and is a low amount per semester.
The big one was going to take their student center fee from $39 to $150 (and wouldn't have affected most current students, it was going to kick in like in 2026). I suspect the big jump was the biggest issue. It failed by 3 votes. The building could use an update, but I think they may have asked for too much (even if it was mostly the next groups of students who would have been stuck with the fee).
All this and include how they might benefit from it, if there is some way for them to directly benefit. Sometimes there are and sometimes there aren't, it depends on the proposed fee really.
To the bolded part, that would be a short list and a small amount since we have practiced selective donation acceptance for over the last 10 years. Most of the smaller donations/donors have had it and the money has been going other places.
In the past we have made the statement, and correct me here if I am wrong, that we have 70,000 living alumni. 98-99% of those probably don't give and aren't even asked. If we actually asked and had a plan in place to show alumni they are valued and can benefit from the donation, a lot would. 70,000 x $50 is the 3.5 million. If they all gave a $100 over a year that's 7 million, get a similar fee passed as to the one that failed and you are 10 million higher in budget with minimal effort.
Sell it like everyone else does.... "for .27 a day you could make the life of a Tech student more enriched with your contribution. Every donation makes a difference and is much appreciated".
Seems like the leaders of the largest student organizations didn't mobilize and promote "vote yes" propaganda. My daughter only heard the people who were against it. I'm not sure how much it would have helped but it would have done something. Maybe also get every athlete to personally appeal to at least 3 students to vote yes.
Have you considered those Dogs?
But we had a graphic on social media with numbers and everything. Working the vote like every campaign on earth does wasn't necessary!!!!Now me simply being pissed at our continued failure to move forward and very likely in the decision makers offices be blamed because I won't give blindly anymore, I will apologize to the people if any that did get out there and work the vote and promote the "yes" side.
Y’all are over analyzing this. I mentioned this earlier but there was a record turnout due to academia bashing it to hell and back. Students abstained from all items other than this proposal… voting like true southern Democrats.
Doesn't mean with even minimal effort on anyone's part in favor of the fee that the record turnout couldn't have been even higher and ended in a positive result for the fee. 3,000+ voted, 1500 no votes only voted on the fee, we have roughly 10,000 students. This is also systemic of the larger problems the university has as a whole. You have to be proactive and engage the target audience now days. You have to show them the benefit of acting in a particular manner or it won't happen. Very few in todays society are going to sacrifice of themselves without seeing a rational benefit to them. Especially in the case of something as trivial in the big scheme of life college sports. You have students equating spending more of foosball (its the debil), to misappropriation and asking why aren't the funds being directed to mental health or programs that receive little to no funding, instead of the programs with the most getting more.
We know the benefits, but they don't and nobody explained that to them, The only voice talking to them they supported. We are asking why there weren't two voices??
I agree. And I try to look at this sympathetically. When I was in school, most of my engineer friends couldn't care less about sports. "Why are we paying a fee for something we're not using?" So there is a duty to clearly explain how the benefits apply to the individual.
And if it doesn't, then maybe they have a point. But we think it does - and no one bothered to explain that.
I have said this before but…..
1. When I was in school from 2002-2005, I don’t remember attending games with many if any of my classmates from the school of business.
2. As an adjunct professor, I recently asked a class of 40 juniors and seniors how many of them attended the games and I could count them on 1 hand. One of them was a football player.
As far as I can tell, we have never done a good job of promoting the athletics side of the non-athletes college experience.
Hopefully the player raised his hand!
There is something I think left out of the conversation. I’ve been in education over 20 years. I can’t tell you the percentages, but kids are different these days than 30-40 years ago. A larger percentage of kids these days don’t care one bit about sports than in the past. They would rather watch e-sports or their favorite streamer than attend an athletic event. I played all kinds of sports growing up. Love watching sports and both of my kids(18-21 yrs) couldn’t care less about sports despite my best efforts.
I think that is a factor. I enjoy all sports even though I only played baseball. My son enjoys basketball, cross country, fishing, and hunting. He could not care less about the others sports. He did, however, really get into baseball last year and he may have become a real fan after meeting several players. Kids do spend a lot more time playing video games and watching tv than any of us ever did.
That may matter if we get to a point where e-sports and streaming is bringing the kind of exposure and donor engagement that football and basketball do. A tiny slim chance but not entirely impossible.
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