INSIDE
Eating healthy during finals Who was recognized at DIFF? Senior editors say “bye”
Kraft to play in local PGA tournament
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TUESDAY MAY 1, 2012
Wednesday High 55, Low 38 Thursday High 71, Low 50
VOLUME 96 ISSUE 89 FIRST COPY FREE, ADDITIONAL COPIES 50 CENTS
Athletics deficit still on the rise Budget records, data kept from student scrutiny MACKENZIE O’HARA Contributing Writer mohara@smu.edu
SIDNEY HOLLINGSWORTH / The Daily Campus
After the halftime show of SMU’s Homecoming game, scores of students exited Ford Stadium, leaving the last twenty rows almost completely deserted. SMU’s comparatively high athletic deficit is a is partly due to low attendance at football games, according to the faculty chair of SMU’s athletic policies committee.
MACKENZIE O’HARA Contributing Writer mohara@smu.edu Dozens of SMU students, faculty members and staffers spent the first Thursday of the 2012 spring semester celebrating a new era at the university — SMU’s invitation to join the Big East Conference. The Hughes-Trigg Student Center was filled with excitement as President R. Gerald Turner announced that joining the Big East meant SMU had finally made it back to the national stage of college athletics. What Turner didn’t say is that while SMU is enjoying greater success on the field and landing high-profile coaches like Larry Brown and June Jones, its athletic department is piling up
substantial losses. Over the past seven years, its losses have topped $113 million. The deficit is equal to almost half of all tuition and fees paid by students in the 2011 to 2012 school year. The losses shocked students. “After hearing this, I find it ridiculous and humiliating,” Mark Butler, a senior finance major, said. “With all of the smart individuals involved at this university, you would think that we could find ways to not burn through cash over such a secondary priority. I think any student should be outraged at this fact.” The athletic department’s annual deficit rose dramatically after Turner selected Steve Orsini as athletic director in 2006.
During the three years before Orsini arrived, the athletic department lost an average of $12.9 million a year. In Orsini’s first four years, the annual losses jumped to an average of $18.6 million — an increase of 44 percent. Orsini acknowledged that the data was accurate, saying that SMU knows about the operating deficit and approves it as a part of the university’s budget. The reality that the SMU Athletic Department loses money hardly makes it unique among U.S. universities. What is startling — and unknown to most students — is the size of those losses. A 2010 NCAA report examined the athletic department budgets of SMU and the other 119 Football
Bowl Subdivision (FBS) schools. Ninety-eight lost money. Between 2007 and 2010, the median annual deficit for these colleges was about $9.6 million. During this same period, the SMU athletic department lost $18.6 million annually — nearly twice the median deficit of the other schools. The total median deficit for the 98 FBS schools was $38.47 million from 2007 to 2010. The total deficit for SMU during that time was $74.42 million. According to Dan Fulks, a Transylvania University accounting professor and research consultant for the NCAA, only about 15 of the 98 net loss schools lost more than SMU.
See DEFICIT page 6
LAUREN ADAMS Contributing Writer ladams@smu.edu The annual Common Reading selection has been successful and controversial in the past eight years, with thought-provoking books that deal with current events, crises, and culture. Each year, first-years are given the books at their AARO sessions and are expected to participate in a discussion before the beginning of school with professors, AARO and Corral leaders and Resident Assistants. Last week, the Common Reading Selection Committee announced “The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine” by Michael Lewis as the
selection for the incoming class of 2016. In a letter to faculty, Harold Stanley of the Office of the Provost said, “The book’s explorations of culture and crisis surrounding an event impacting current students’ generation will bear great relevance for them.” Past Corral Leader Leanna Peppercorn thinks the program is successful in its aim of easing freshmen into discussion-based classes. “It does a good job of linking all of the incoming class together with something to talk about in their rhetoric classes on the first day of school,” she said. “It throws them into in class discussions without having to wait to start and finish an entire book during the semester.”
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ACADEMICS
Common reading book announced
Two years ago, The Daily Campus published a story reporting that the SMU athletic department’s deficit had climbed to $93 million since 2004, a fact student reporters discovered through documents on the Faculty Senate website. Since then, the deficit has grown by more than $20 million, totaling more than $113 million. But students have no way of knowing about the increase unless a faculty member provides access to the documents, which are now password-protected. Athletics Policy Committee Chair Dan Orlovsky was unaware that students couldn’t access the site. According to Orlovsky, SMU was ranked sixth out of 57 members of the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics (the reform group of faculty senates of Division 1 football schools) in a survey on transparency in governance of athletics departments. Orlovsky said he didn’t think the coalition asked a question about whether students had access to information about the faculty senate. “I think they just assume that faculty senate stuff is public stuff,” he said. When asked why that wasn’t the case, Orlovsky said, “I don’t know why it’s different at
SMU — I don’t know how to answer that.” Part of the SMU Faculty Senate’s website mission statement states,“The Senate seeks to further the university’s dedication to the pursuit of truth and the preservation, dissemination and extension of knowledge.” Pat Davis, an adjunct theology professor who served as Faculty Senate President from 2000 to 2001, was also surprised to hear that students couldn’t access the site. During an interview, Davis called Fred Olness, who was president of the Faculty Senate at the time access was limited, for an explanation. Olness attributed the blockage to a technical update of the website. However, the current Faculty Senate President José Lage said the reports and documents are restricted because the information pertains to the faculty’s interests only. “Having this section open to the general public (including the students) would be similar to having letters exchanged between a married couple made public to other people (unless of course, there is a legal reason for making it public),” he said in an email. Lage also explained the password-protected information on the website prohibits students from accessing data ranging from senate meeting minutes to the annual budget reports. Included
Trolley service reinvigorating Uptown JENNIFER BUNTZ Contributing Writer jbuntz@smu.edu Imagine the days when students would climb aboard a green dragon to receive a free ride from SMU’s campus to Uptown. OK, maybe not an actual dragon but a street car with that nickname. The McKinney Avenue Transit Authority that operates 365 days a year, all started in the 1920’s. The track ran all the way from downtown, went through Knox Henderson and over to Hillcrest to then end at University. Students could get on the trolley right by campus, and that was possible until it came to an end in 1956. About 24 years after the method of transportation was shut down, the construction on McKinney Ave. began. During all the construction on the road, steel tracks were uncovered.
Courtesy of Joe Mabel
An M-Line Trolley conductor aboard Car 186 (“The Green Dragon”) points out tourist spots along the McKinney trolley line. Car 186 originally carried SMU students downtown before being retired in 1956.
At first no one knew what they were, but Ed Landrum who was involved with the transformation knew exactly what they were and the history behind them. He then called Phil Cobb the president of
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the Restaurant Association over to his house to play him a video of the street cars operating all over uptown during the 1920’s. Cobb was so enthralled by the idea he and Landrum immediately
partnered to reintroduce this method of transportation to Dallas again. “It just so happened that Mr.
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