Volume 28 · Number 2 · Winter 2011
Letters
Thanks, Coach Dee
[Re: “Finish Line,” fall 2010] I was not a student-athlete while at Davis, but I did take an aerobic running course with Coach Dee [Vochatzer] in grad school. If teaching P.E. classes is an extra burden on coaches, it did not bother her.
Students usually rolled off the bed straight onto the track for the 9 a.m. class. But Coach Dee’s passion and energy, not to mention the sight of her fiery hair and flashy nails, would wake us all up in no time.
Her keen eye and inspired coaching helped even me make improvements to my running form and avoid the injuries I had before I took her class. She took me one level higher and helped give me a taste of what elite athletes feel when they run with perfect form. Little did I know she was the head coach of the 1996 U.S. Olympic team. It is now no wonder she could fix my running. I am humbled she could teach to my low skill levels without being condescending.
Without taking her class, I would have given up running, frustrated with injuries. In essence, she has given me a practical life skill.
Coach Dee retiring from UC Davis is a great loss, not only to our athletic program but also to students in general.
Senthil Cheetancheri, Ph.D. í07
Sunnyvale
More than teams hurt by sports cuts
Why should we still care about what happened to the four sports teams cut this past spring? After all, don’t we all feel the pain of these horrific economic times? And why should athletics be spared from state budget cuts? To answer these questions, please consider the following:
At UC Davis, it’s the students who pay (over $15 million annually) for intercollegiate athletics (ICA) — not the state. Students have passed multiple referenda to tax themselves to protect the vitality and diversity of Aggie sports from precisely what happened last spring.
As part of the move to Division I, the university made a pact with the campus community — the terms of which became the “Core Principles of Intercollegiate Athletics.” One of these states: “UC Davis cannot reduce its broad base program, but rather must seek to add sports.” What happened last spring constitutes a disturbing and precedent-setting retreat from those principles.
The process that led to the cuts was, as the chair of the California State Senate Select Committee on Gender Discrimination concluded, “very flawed” and yielded “a very flawed result.” ICA decided at the outset that an option that would spread incremental reductions over the whole program in an effort to preserve all teams was not feasible and would not be considered. Therefore, only options that included the dropping of entire teams were examined. Yet independent modeling by a Graduate School of Management professor concluded otherwise. And not only was the student body not properly consulted, the Associated Students Senate was summarily ignored. Moreover, two distinguished faculty members resigned from Vice Chancellor Fred Wood’s advisory committee because they felt ICA had not lived up to the intent of the university’s major decision-making process. Despite all of the above and more, ICA’s recommendation was accepted and last April women’s rowing, men’s swimming/diving, wrestling and indoor track were dropped.
So why should we care? Because UC Davis can and should do much better. Not only did 150 or so dedicated student-athletes and their coaches get thrown under the bus, but along with them went due process, transparency, principles of shared governance, and accountability to the student body for the use of their funds. If this university truly wants to train leaders of the future, then it needs to walk the talk. It needs to show how a challenge like this can be turned into an opportunity to build trust. That’s what is really at stake here and that’s why the decision to drop those sports needs to be reconsidered. As important as those sports are, this is really about us.
Paul Medved ’78
Alameda
Senior Associate Athletic Director Nona Richardson responds: Since our coaches also teach P.E. classes, approximately half of their salaries came from state funding. Without cuts to the ICA program, state budget cuts would in essence have left us with part-time coaches and no P.E. program (which is also funded by the students). The approximately $15 million in various student fees continues to help fund the remaining 23 sport programs.
There was a time during a flourishing economy that we were able to add sports in order to meet Title IX compliance; we have now moved to another prong of the three-prong test for complying with the federal gender-balance act — proportionality. Our 23 sports still allow us to have a broad-base athletics program. ICA made across-the-board cuts over the previous two years of budget reductions. With the last budget cut there were no more unilateral cuts that would have made up the funding difference.
‘Mission impossible’
I’m trying to figure out what you had in mind when you published “Mission Impossible” by Robin DeRieux in the fall 2010 issue. Recall that the article had the summary advice to parents: “Bug off. Step aside. Don’t get in their way. Act less like a CEO and more like an ATM.” Really? . . . If the article was meant to be satirical, I’d say the satire went over like a hunk of lead.
Jeffrey Marque
San Mateo
All I can say is, brilliant. Are you watching my daughter and me through your crystal ball? Thanks. I laughed and overidentified.
Robyn Latter
Malibu
Brave, not selfish
Brave, not selfish
I write in response to the fall issue’s outrageous letters regarding the summer “Rebels with a Cause” article. Partisan inclination aside, it’s essential for today’s students to become aware of political issues and, when necessary, practice taking political action. The students who participated in last year’s (and hopefully an ongoing) movement to bring awareness to California’s defunding of public education should be praised for their actions. They are not, as one writer put it, a selfish minority, but rather an informed and brave minority — one that should be extolled for having both the wherewithal and the guts to make their voices heard where so many students have been silent. Would you rather have them inactive while allowing California’s broken dream of a Master Plan slip through their pacified fingers? Go for it, fellow Davis students. If participating in our democracy by exercising your right to free speech is now deemed “rebellion,” I encourage an all-out revolution.
Jessy Beckett
Graduate student in community
development and food systems
Good for democracy
For me, the protests on the Davis campus were a good sign. They woke me and many others from complacency and (like those letters to the editor) stimulated me to think, even to feel more deeply and to stand for what I felt was right. In our nation’s history, protests have played a significant part in initiating social and political change. From the Boston Tea Party, the fight for women’s suffrage, the civil rights marches of the ’60s and the marches against the Vietnam War and several other notorious wars since, we can see changes that might have never happened if such committed and courageous people had not stood up and become a “nuisance.”
One letter writer states that those students protesting the budget cuts and rate hikes “obviously don’t have enough to do.” One major problem today is that we all have too much to do. If we had a little more time to read and question more, we might have been able to stop the economic and environmental disasters that we are seeing now — all of which are a result of too many people being “self-centered” and “myopic.” . . . As for whether education is a privilege or a right, if only the privileged become educated, then democracy regresses into an oligarchy.
Phil Milgrom ’69
Warren, Mass.
Reason to protest
Mr. Davis’ letter “Selfish Minority” [fall 2010] naively assumes that because only 1 percent of students participated in the protest, the other 99 percent do not agree with them. I, for one, do not like to participate in protests, but often agree with the causes.
Two letter writers vilifying student protesters graduated in 1957 and 1964. The annual fees at UC Davis in 1957 were $100, and in 1964 they were $220. When I started at UC Davis in l966, they were around $100 per quarter, or $300 per year. This was quite affordable, and in those days, parents usually paid these fees, as well as other college expenses such as housing and books. There was no “tuition” back then, as this was a public university. Tuition was first imposed under then-Gov. Ronald Reagan in 1970. Now the annual fees are $13,079 for undergraduates and from $30,000 to $50,000 per year for graduate students. When the gentlemen who wrote these letters graduated from college, they did not have to deal with repaying tens of thousands of dollars in loans like students do nowadays (even hundreds of thousands if a student goes to law or medical school). [That they enter] the workforce with debt like that is simply not right.
Much handwringing has been done about lack of funding for education due to budget cuts and the resultant need to raise student fees. . . . I believe a lot of the funding for education is now being funneled off into obscenely huge administrative salaries, and students’ fees are being raised to compensate. Although I am not one to participate in protests, I would definitely support a protest of that.
Lindy Tillement ’79, M.A. ’99
Rio Linda