Budget Cuts

So I’ve got a lot to say on this topic and I’m going to go into a lot of depth on budget cuts about all different aspects of college and high school life. To many of the high schoolers’ reading this, it may seem irrelevant to your life, but understanding how this works truly is important for the future. If you could also pass this onto parents I think it could help inform some of their choices as well (I strongly encourage this). If you would like to disregard this post and get to my race analysis and previews that’s fine as well, but I will say that there are two petitions at the bottom for RMU’s XC/Track team and Temple’s 7 teams that are currently being cut. If you could take a short time to sign them it truly does wonders for the programs. Thanks!

Across the nation colleges and high schools continue to cut budgets of all areas of study, sports, and extracurriculars for students. The question is often asked why? 

Most of the time money is not an issue for the schools, but instead it is a prioritizing application of resources. I will speak from my own experiences and the experiences of others and come to a few conclusions and suggestions on how to help prevent such issues in the future. 

Many of you might know that I am a student at Muhlenberg College, a small (2,200 students) Division 3 school in Allentown, Pa. I love so many aspects of my school, but like most institutions it has some issues and allocation of resources is one of them. Muhlenberg’s theater program is #1 in the nation for liberal arts schools and the dance program is #2. Our science department has connections with UPenn and 5 of my teammates in the past 2 years alone have gotten in to their medical school. We have a very strong pre-med program… We also have a fantastic liberal arts and business program. My roommate is a part of the business program, while I am a part of the liberal arts (History and Religion Studies Major). Our departments get very few of the resources from school donations. For example the Asian Studies Minor gets $400 per year which the theater department’s separate website alone gets $25,000 a year. I have friends across the departments and I love the theater and science kids, my best friends are in those departments for the most part, but that is how resources are allocated. In many ways this makes sense that the top programs get more money, but they’re also the popular/cool programs for a college to show off. Much like academics this happens with sports, where Football is the cool/popular sport to show off to potential students, so they get the most money. 

How can you make a difference?

College’s constantly do calls to alumni and parents asking for monetary donations. These checks are usually written to the school and they can do whatever they like with the donation, BUT you can send in checks that are specific. For example you can specify that your money goes to the creation of a specific class, to a specific department, or a specific team/club. Colleges don’t often tell people about this option, because well, they want to allocate the resources as they see fit, but you can be in control of where your money goes. So next time, parents, alumni, family, friends, when you donate money, consider donating it to what you are interested in and what you would like to see develop at your past institution. This can be extraordinarily important to a subject area or sports team or even a club. I know after I graduate my money will be specifically given to the religion studies and history departments along with the track team. In just three semesters at Muhlenberg College the staff/faculty of all 3 areas have truly changed my life for the better, and I want to give back to them at some point. I know that many of you out there have had similar experiences in college/high school and giving back in specifics can make that difference to others in the future.

Thank you for reading,

--ForrestCRN

RMU petition: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/please-save-the-rmu-mens-cross-countrytrack-and

Temple petition: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/594/394/537/ (it doesn’t say track in the title, but not all 7 sports could be fit in. I know it’s a bother, but it’s for all of the teams, including track&field).

Let me know in the comment section if you guys would be interested in me doing more posts like this in addition to ones about High School track and field. I have a wide group of friends and I am extremely active on campus in many activities. I know a lot about the inter-workings of colleges and I would love to discuss majors and future plans, ect.