Reinstatement of Cal Sports A Possibility
Jose Carlos Fajardo/Contra Costa Times/MCT
February 9, 2011
Last September, University of California Berkeley eliminated five of its intercollegiate sports programs in an attempt to save an estimated $4 million a year. Attributing the cuts to a worsening budget situation, University Chancellor Robert Birgeneau announced that baseball, women’s lacrosse, men’s and women’s gymnastics would be dropped, and men’s rugby would convert to “varsity club” status at the end of the 2011 academic year.
Birgeneau has directed Cal Baseball Foundation, in addition to Men’s Rugby, Women’s Lacrosse, and Men’s and Women’s Gymnastics to develop a sustainable financial plan to support the reinstatement of all five programs and to return the Cal Athletic Program to a strong financial footing, in full compliance with Title IX.
Save Cal Sports, an support organization attempting to rescue the eliminated sports, planned to submit figures to the chancellor this week on how much they have raised toward reinstatement. Birgeneau set the fundraising target at $25 million to potentially reinstate all five athletic programs.
Former Cal baseball player and spokesman for the group, Doug Nickle announced on the Save Cal Sports webpage that the organization has collected $15 million in pledges toward the required $25 million. With the San Francisco Giants, Cal alum, and an army of community members on their side, Save Cal Sports aims to keep all five cut sports alive.
No decision is likely until next week on the reinstatement, but the organization urges community members to continue writing to the chancellor, in addition to pledges and donations.
Thanks everybody for your comments!! Check out Caroline’s updated article (https://www.mhsmirador.com/news/2011/02/09/reinstatement-of-cal-sports-a-possibility/). Cal women’s lacrosse, women’s gymnastics, and men’s rugby have been reinstated!! Share what you think about men’s baseball and men’s gymnastics not making the cut!
When UC Berkeley announced its elimination of student sports including baseball, men’s, women’s gymnastics, women’s lacrosse teams and its defunding of the national-champion men’s rugby team, the chancellor sighed, “Sorry, but this was necessary!”
But was it? Yes, the university is in dire financial straits. Yet $3 million was somehow found by Chancellor Robert J Birgeneau ($500,000 salary) to pay the Bain consulting firm to uncover waste, inefficiencies in UC Berkeley (Cal), despite the fact that a prominent East Coast university was accomplishing the same thing without expensive consultants.
Essentially, the process requires collecting, analyzing information from faculty, staff. Apparently, Cal senior management believe that the faculty, staff of their world-class university lacks the cognitive ability, integrity, energy to identify millions in savings. If consultants are necessary, the reason is clear: the chancellor has lost credibility with the people who provided the information to the consultants. Chancellor Robert J Birgeneau has reigned for eight years, during which time the inefficiencies proliferated to $150 million. Even as Bain’s recommendations are implemented (‘They told me to do it’, Birgeneau), credibility, trust, problems remain.
Bain is interviewing faculty, staff, senior management and academic senate leaders to identify $150 million in inefficiencies, most of which could have been found internally. One easy-to-identify problem, for example, was wasteful procurement practices such as failing to secure bulk discounts on printers. But Birgeneau apparently has no concept of savings: even in procuring a consulting firm he failed to receive proposals from other firms.
Students, staff, faculty, California Legislators are the victims of his incompetent decisions. Now that sports teams are feeling the pinch, perhaps the California Alumni, benefactors, donors, will demand to know why Birgeneau is raking in $500,000 a year while abdicating his work responsibilities.
Let there be light for transparency
The author, who has 35 years’ consulting experience, has taught at University of California Berkeley, where he was able to observe the culture and the way the senior management operates.
USC just added women’s lacrosse to its roster of varsity offerings, yet Cal cut their program. I’m hoping the programs are reinstated. As a Cal graduate and huge fan of their various sports teams, I was dismayed that the sports were cut to begin with. Athletics, as with many other campus extra-curricular activities, add to the campus community (and the greater Bay Area community as well). Go to a women’s basketball game any Saturday and you will see a cross-section of the community coming together to enjoy the experience. Same goes for any other sport at Cal.
I’m also a huge supporter of TITLE IX. When I was in high school in the late 70s we had NOT one sports offering for girls until Title IX came along. This was at a suburban high school with nearly 1500 students. Title IX came into existence and suddenly we had opportunities to compete and excel. I can’t stress enough how significant Title IX has been for girls and young women across this country. It’s made a HUGE difference.
At any rate, I will keep my fingers crossed that Cal will find a way to restore the programs that were cut. I’ve made my pledge and also donate what I can in other ways (season tickets, etc.)
Go Bears!
Thank you so much for your donation! It really means a lot to the Cal students who had their dreams stripped from them. It is great news that USC added an NCAA Women’s Lacrosse team to the MPSF in response to the elimination of the Cal Women’s team. Former Assistant Coach for Northwestern, Lindsey Munday, will coach USC Women’s lacrosse. Keep spreading the word!
This is absurd. Cal should not be cutting it’s growing sports. The New York Times article says it all (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/09/sports/09titleix.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1297278067-3lPUjqWE+VinoGx6Lm1sDQ) I cannot comprehend how Cal did not know that they were in violation of title 9 when they proposed the cuts…. Lots of changes need to be made to fix Cal Athletics. For one, the Cal athletic director has an unheard of salary of $470k+. I know I am not original in having the idea of firing her considering there is already an ENTIRE website dedicated to it. (http://firesandybarbour.com/) As a parent of a child who is a prospective Cal student-athlete, the situation deeply upsets me. Oh, and did I mention that Cal is spending $321 million on renovations for the new football field and $150 million high-performance center for athletes. GET IT TOGETHER CAL!!
In order for Cal to pull it together they need $25 million to reinstate these sports. Miramonte, Campolindo, Acalanes, and Las Lomas, and many other Bay Area schools feed many students to Cal, many of whose parents are alum. If you are interested in donating please go to http://www.savecalbaseball.com/ because the decision is slated to come out this week!