What should be the role of athletics on a university campus? This question is important in the context of both recent developments on Furman’s campus and in higher education generally. This past weekend, Furman played LSU’s football team, a nationally-ranked program with two BCS championships in the past 10 years. This question about the role of athletics is one of the many questions that Furman students, administrators, staff, faculty, and alumni must confront in achieving a vision for Furman in uncertain and volatile times.
Organized athletics is more than just recreation, distraction, or entertainment. Seriously pursuing a sport generates space for growth, personal development, and the cultivation of useful habits and lessons applicable to life off the field or court. Cheering for a team or supporting an athlete can unify an otherwise disparate community. Finally, we cannot overlook the larger value of sports as a cultural pastime and recreational entertainment. However, a disproportionate focus on athletics at a small liberal arts college like Furman is unjustified, especially when that emphasis is not oriented toward bettering student athletes. Athletics for the sake of athletics — or emphasizing athletics as a means of generating revenue or marketing the university — is inconsistent with the purpose of this university if that accentuation sacrifices the quality of the academic and educational opportunities offered at Furman.
First and most importantly, is Furman prioritizing athletics over academics? The fact that Furman University has recently received generous donations for renovating the newly renamed Trone Student Center and Paladin Stadium while continuously increasing tuition and fees for students and eliminating professorships from some departments would seem to signify a problem. The reality, however, is more complicated — the recent renovations and investments in Furman athletics have been paid for by donors and not by funds from Furman’s budget or endowment, and the Board of Trustees’ commitment to increasing scholarship funding shows that the administration is not disproportionately favoring athletics over academics. Finally, the last quarter of the ongoing “Because Furman Matters” financial campaign allocates $45 million of its $100 million goal to academics, as opposed to $20 million dedicated to athletic projects. However, even if Furman is not financial privileging athletics over academics, problems persist in how we live out the roles of academics and athletics in individual and institutional life.
Discussions about the role of academics and athletics in a collegiate environment revolve fundamentally around questions of value. Why is it that we emphasize renovations to stadiums and student life buildings over equally important financial commitments to academics and education? Why do we promote and talk about one, but not the other? The fear is that an overemphasis on athletics devalues Furman’s commitment to education. Compare the attendance at football games to the attendance at guest lectures or music recitals. Compare the promotional materials for the recent reveal of the new sports logo to the way students are informed about major shifts in policies directly affecting students and apartments. If we implicitly de-emphasizing academics in the way that we shape and reflect on our own identity as a community, we lose our purpose, and we place ourselves in danger of becoming just another institution interested in intake quotas, revenue streams, and bottom lines, and the programs that best advance those goals. Furman should dedicate itself to finding the same value in the individual academics and artistic educational accomplishments of students as we do in the games, matches, and the dedications of new buildings and stadiums.
The formation of this orientation toward academics would have implications for the way Furman University makes financial and policy decisions. Hypothetically, if moving from competing as an NCAA Division I school to competing as a Division II or Division III school — reducing the size and cost of Furman’s athletic programs — would avert an unsustainable budget deficit or prevent cuts in academic programs and departments, would it be a sacrifice that we as an institution would be willing to make? In this and similarly difficult budgetary situations, we should strive to preserve Furman’s core commitment to academics and to its students, a commitment that might require drastic transformations in athletics and other aspects of student life.
This commitment to academic and educational development should shows through in the way that Furman markets itself to prospective students, prioritizing the essentials of the liberal arts education that Furman offers. This prioritization not only clearly marks why college education — specifically a Furman education — matters, but also functions as a way of emphasizing and perhaps recovering what makes athletics and other aspects of student life such integral parts of a larger educational experience.
