Baddour says fee increase’s goal is ‘broad-based excellence’

The University’s athletic programs will suffer if the department does not receive more than $2 million from a student fee increase, department officials said Friday.

The athletics fee proposal of a $90 increase per student to the $274.50 athletics fee was presented Friday to the student fee advisory subcommittee.

The fee increase will be voted on by the subcommittee this week.
The athletics department would use the revenue from the fee increase to support scholarships and non-revenue Olympic sports, athletic director Dick Baddour said in the meeting.

The proposal states that half of the increase would support the Olympic sports that don’t produce revenue — all sports excluding football and men’s basketball.

But the primary way UNC generates revenue for its Olympic sports is through revenue from men’s basketball and football, Chancellor Holden Thorp said in an interview.

The proposal states that men’s basketball and football “generate more than enough revenue to cover their expenses.”

The other $45 of the increase would help meet the funding of scholarships for athletes, which was damaged by the N.C. General Assembly’s elimination of the tuition waiver for out-of-state athletes who receive full scholarships in 2010, Baddour said.

“We’re facing pretty dramatic challenges in the future centered around scholarship programs,” he said.

The department has tried to cover funding gaps to the Olympic sports and scholarship programs by increasing fundraising endowments and through administrative budget cuts, Baddour said.

A total of 215 full scholarships are allocated to student athletes in Olympic sports, and 450 other athletes are on some form of scholarship, he added.

“Programs that we feel we can compete for national championships in we try to keep funding at a high level,” Baddour said.

Serena Witzke, president of the Graduate and Professional Student Federation, said the athletic department should consider the need to split up funds if they do not receive the full increase.

“You have to consider if you would be willing to let other costs suffer to maintain this broad-based program,” she said.

Baddour said that although his commitment to scholarships and the equal maintenance of all 28 sports is strong, it is not enough.

“The difficulty is that I will soon be out of office,” he said.
“What my philosophy is might not be others’ philosophies, so as much as I could I would want money to go to scholarships.”

Winston Crisp, vice chancellor for student affairs, questioned UNC’s commitment to stronger sports programs if a gap in funding made it necessary to choose which sports should be the main priorities.

“Is our commitment to broad-based excellence stronger than our commitment to our best and strongest programs if we had to choose?” Crisp said.

But Baddour said UNC’s stronger sport programs are already struggling to maintain their budgets without the fee increase.

“We do have to pick and choose,” Baddour said. “But at this point some of our better sport programs are in jeopardy.”

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