<p>As announced earlier, MIT is cutting 8 varsity sports:</p>
<p>To members of the MIT community:</p>
<p>It is with regret that we write to inform you that the following eight varsity sports will no longer be offered at MIT: Alpine Skiing, Golf, Mens Ice Hockey, Womens Ice Hockey, Mens Gymnastics, Womens Gymnastics, Pistol, and Wrestling. These changes are effective at the conclusion of this academic year.</p>
<p>Yeah, I have no clue how that happened. Tough cuts had to be made, but we routinely kick military butt in pistol and it’s not one of the most expensive sports.</p>
<p>So everyone is really surprised that pistol got cut, which is totally understandable…but think about it, I mean, what else would you cut? I highly doubt football, soccer, basketball, were ever in danger… Granted there were several dozen sports but still, when cutting 8/42 of the options, you’re going to dip into surprising territory.</p>
<p>I was reading zephyr when this news broke, and I swear, I saw people going “What? <em>Pistol</em>? Really?” or things to that effect on at least a dozen different classes.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I heard people saying that Pistol has a problem with coaching turnover. And the ammo is expensive, and there aren’t many schools with Pistol teams, so “availability of appropriate competition” is a problem. I was still shocked that they cut it, though.</p>
<p>I was talking with one of the gymnastics alums today, and he mentioned that the gymnastics team has a substantial amount of money in their team account – enough money to run the team for at least a year, and mostly donated by alums and earmarked for gymnastics. DAPER has indicated that they will be appropriating these funds, which I find completely unacceptable.</p>
<p>The cheerleaders are worried that they’re going to get rid of all the gymnastics equipment – if we can’t use the spring floor to practice, we really have to stop doing a lot of the stunts we do.</p>
<p>… seriously? If a team can survive with their own funding, they should be allowed to continue for as long as they can - not have their money taken away. The Equestrian Team is currently (barely) surviving on its own funds.</p>
<p>More to the point, according to the way Mollie phrased it at least, DAPER has absolutely no right to that money. Either it gets used for gymnastics or it goes back into the pockets of the people who put it there.</p>
<p>The decision to cut varsity sports is outrageous. If MIT needs to make cuts it need look no further than its own bloated administrative and management staff. This is one of the primary areas in which expenses have been allowed to run wild over the past 10-15 years fueled by tuition increases and ridiculous predictions of continued growth in endowment earnings. The administration should prune back its own budget to where it was 10 years ago plus the rate of inflation. The notion of accross the board 5% cuts is nonsense when for years some expenses have been allowed to increase more rapidly than others. </p>
<p>In the private sector, you have senior management working for $ 1 a year until fiscal responsibility is restored. If one senior administrator did that at MIT that would plug the $500,000 “hole” in the athletic budget. [And let’s be honest, it was the administrators who ran the endowment like a hedge fund, raised tuition and spent like drunken sailors.] But dont look to administrators to scrutinize their own budgets [and salaries and staffs and pet projects] and dont expect their hand-picked trustees to force them to do it. </p>
<p>Instead, just round up the usual suspects for execution. And, in a tech school, just feed the stereotype and kill off sports.</p>
<p>Everybody seems to be freaking out about Pistol being cut (including the team members) but after a meeting with Daper on Thursday (the day of the cuts) we were informed exactly why Pistol was cut. Believe it or not, it makes total sense and the pistol team is totally cool with it. We’re a little uneasy with cutting sports in general, accepting the fact that they’re being cut, cutting pistol was totally legitimate, and here’s why.</p>
<p>Sports are given varsity status so that they can compete against other teams in various leagues. In order to compete Div III you need to be a varsity sport. The MIT Pistol team competes almost entirely against other Pistol teams that are club sports. Being varsity isn’t necessary to compete against the teams we do or to go to Nationals. Realizing this, DAPER decided to remove our varsity status.</p>
<p>We fully intend to apply to be a club sport, and are actually kind of warming up to the idea. As a club sport we will continue to get to use the facilities and equipment we have been, but without all of the DAPER restrictions and regulations. We’re also free of the NCAA restrictions (which we were held to, even though we weren’t a member).</p>
<p>The only issue is funding, but as favorites for next year’s National Championships, we intend on getting corporate sponsors (something we’re allowed to do as a club sport), including our ammunition manufacturers, gun manufacturers, and possibly Panera bread.</p>
<p>So, long and short, Pistol is just fine and we’re not particularly bitter about losing varsity status.</p>
<p>The women’s gymnastics team was having a meeting yesterday afternoon when I was in there with the cheerleading squad. I imagine they were probably discussing those sorts of possibilities.</p>
<p>8 varsity teams are cut at MIT. This is a bad way to save money and risk that more kids will do drugs and drink. Not being happy with them self, these students live a balanced life and now you want to take it away … Harvard is not dropping any sports. they know it is best for everyone.
I don’t know how they will function without it, Sports are so much better then drinking and drugs, Sports keep them happy and sane. With the workload at MIT, sports are a great way to get away and let it all out. This is also a great way to meet really good friends. Golf has been a Sport at MIT since 1907, the 4th oldest sport That is so sad – these kids need to do something other than party when there is down time.</p>
<p>Uh. The sports cuts suck, but I don’t think it’s going to lead everyone down the path to destruction. Our sports program was <em>bigger</em> than Harvard’s - it’s not as though we’re severely lacking.</p>
<p>There are also tons and tons of awesome non-sports things to do at MIT.</p>
<p>I’d rather see sports cuts than academic budget cuts. Universities, especially ones like MIT, are intended to teach and train the next generation. Sports are entirely useful and have their role, but never should take precedence over academics in a university imho</p>
<p>sports cuts vs. academic cuts is a false dichtotomy. Much of the “growth” in spending over the past ten [even twenty] years has been in administrative and general expense. The administrators, recklessly hoping on unlimited endowment growth, hired more administrators who developed more administrative programs and hired more staff and gave themselves raises and so on.</p>
<p>This same illogic also impacted the cost of academics to an extent since these administrators, armed with their hedge fund endowments, launched raids on one anothers best profs, promising higher and higher compensation packages, staffs and facilities, and bidding up the price.</p>
<p>There are plenty of places to cut waste other than sports or academics. Just look at the categories of expense that grew at greater than the rate of inflation over the past ten years. The student body didnt increase in size over that period so you cant justify the increases on that basis. It’s mostly administrative bloat with more and more administrators dreaming up more and more projects for themselves to administer and hiring ever larger staffs, to justify their ever more generous comp packages.</p>