VALENTINE'S DAY February 10, 2014
AROUND THE WORLD
Life&Arts
Page 9
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THE MERCURY | UTDMERCURY.COM
Athletic staff shake-ups continue
A Special Arrangement College students faced with rising costs, financial challenges increasingly turn to website to establish mutually beneficial relationships with wealthy, older benefactors
Director retires unexpectedly, admits connection between departure and recent release of women's head soccer coach
Story by ANWESHA BHATTACHARJEE Web Editor Illustration by LINA MOON Graphics Editor
PARTH SAMPAT Sports Editor
Ari’s life was sliding out of control — after two DWIs her attorney bills had added on to her debt, her mom had no money to put food on the table and she’d had to put school on hold, despite working five jobs.
Athletic Director Chris Gage retired suddenly in the middle of the academic year, leaving his position on Jan. 22, after more than 10 years at UTD. Several coaches said that Gage resigned from his post without warning and retired the same day he issued his resignation. In an interview with The Mercury on Jan. 30, Gage said it was time for him to separate himself from the job at UTD. “You are in intercollegiate athletics for almost 40 years, and at some point in time you have to walk away CHRIS GAGE from something you really enjoy,” Gage said. Gage’s retirement comes just two months after the athletic department released successful longtime women’s soccer coach John Antonisse. In his 17 years at UTD, Antonisse led his team to two ASC titles and won 80 percent of his ASC games. Neither Gage nor university administration gave any information as to why Antonisse and his assistant coach, Katie Challenger, were released from their duties. Gage acknowledged that his retirement was related in part to Antonisse’s release. “I’m sure that some of it did (relate),” said Gage. “My concern is always for the care and wellbeing of the student athletes, and (Antonisse’s release) in a way probably did (relate).” Antonisse said he felt he was wrongly terminated and had sought legal counsel and made a petition to UTD President David Daniel for his reinstatement. “There was no reason for me to get fired because I did a great job,” said Antonisse. “I didn’t do anything illegal, I didn’t do anything unethical and I didn’t break any rules.” The university chose not to reinstate Antonisse and instead hired Kanute Drugan as the women’s soccer coach on Feb. 7. Antonisse has been hired as the head women’s soccer coach at Brookhaven College, a Dallas County community college. Challenger was recently hired as an administrative assistant at the Nanotech Institute at UTD. Gage, meanwhile, said that despite his retirement from UTD, he would not rule out working in college sports again. “I would love to be able to find another position in intercollegiate athletics,” Gage said. In the past 10 years under Gage’s direction, the UTD athletics department has grown from 187 student athletes in fall 2003 to almost 300 students at the start of this year. Bill Petitt, the associate athletic director for external affairs, has been named the interim athletic director following Gage’s retirement. He joined the athletic department in January 2007.
She needed a lot of money, and fast. Her friend suggested she go online and find sugar daddies, men who provide a monthly allowance to a young woman for a mutually beneficial arrangement, to help her out. It didn’t necessarily have to be about sex, her friend said, but Ari kept thinking she couldn’t be a sugar baby or a playgirl. Finally, she decided to do it. She created a free profile on SeekingArrangment.com to see if she could find a sugar daddy who’d be willing to have her in a non-sexual arrangement like a tour guide or a friend in exchange for the money, Ari said. “I was thinking, I really needed the money and it’s a lot better than prostitution,” she said. “Honestly, I was scared; I was nervous about if there would be any guys that would be interested in just having a friend. I remember thinking, ‘You know what? It’s for my family and it’s for school, and I just need to suck it up.’” Arrangement: An Internet phenomenon Ari isn’t the only student who has used SeekingArrangment.com to make money for school. The website, founded by Brandon Wade in 2006, has one million students with registered profiles as of Jan. 1, said Leroy Vasquez, public relations manager at SeekingArrangment.com. While there are a total of only 60 UTD students registered on the website, five Texas universities feature among the top 75 growing sugar baby schools in the country — schools ranked by the number of sign-ups in the year 2013. Texas State University ranked 10th nationally with 189 sign-ups in 2013, while the University of North Texas ranked 24th with 96 registrations in the same time. UT Austin was a close third in Texas, ranking 30th in the nation with 88 students. The website conducted a membership study in 2011 after they noticed an increase in the number of users registering with a ‘.edu’ email address, in-
dicating that these were students attending college, although the website hadn’t directly marketed to students. The website’s increasing popularity among students led the management to offer a free premium membership upgrade to all students that register with a ‘.edu’ email address, Vasquez said. Unlike other online dating sites like OkCupid or eHarmony, SeekingArrangment requires a sugar daddy-sugar baby arrangement where the sugar baby (or sugar boy) receives a monthly allowance in exchange for the arrangement they make with their sugar daddy or sugar momma, Vasquez said. Most of the allowances range from $1,000 $3,000, some going up to as much as $20,000, he said. The average monthly allowance for a sugar baby in Dallas is $4,721, which is higher than Austin’s average of $3,324 and Houston’s of $4,383. However, the website itself has no control over the kind of arrangement the two parties decide upon. Sugar baby arrangements can be anything
from a sexual relationship to a mentor-mentee relationship, Vasquez said, and are with a successful man or woman who is established professionally, so that it has much more benefits than just money. Life as a sugar baby Ari, who preferred to keep her last name undisclosed, said she and her siblings were used to a lot of money, and after graduating early from high school in December 2010, she even took extra credits at Austin Community College to fill in a semester. Then her parents split. Her father stopped supporting the family, and Ari had to stop going to school to earn money to help her family, which ultimately drove her to step up and create a SeekingArrangement.com profile. For Ari, the experience didn’t start out very well. Interested in a non-sexual relationship, all the initial men she met on the website were graphically
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LIFE&ARTS, PAGE 6
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SPORTS, PAGE 10