Date: 20 Jan. ‘07
TO: The Wichita Eagle, letter to the Editor, “Reader Views”.
FROM: Shocker Black & Golds:
Remember the 20 year damage to our university and the miserable failure of the Board of Regents to correct the damage the KU Board of Regents caused in the first instance.
BARE BONES
In response to retired professor Loper’s “Football isn’t part of WSU’s mission”(March 20 Reader Views): It is important to note that football isn’t part of any other university’s mission in the state or nationwide, either. The false rationale of providing entertainment on Saturday afternoons, is a red herring argument applicable to any and all other universities. The issue is not only educating students, but providing a traditional educational collegiate experience, as WSU did when it came into the state higher education system, or losing traditional students if you do not.
No one is asking WSU to institute a fundraising campaign for football; but $20,000,000 in cash to restart the program has been voluntarily offered from substantive folks.
The mill levy was intended for, and legally authorized by the public for only one thing: to pay off the then existing capital improvement debt of the university consisting of some $1.5 million, which debt has been paid off decades ago. Any further mill levy moneys legally constitute gifts. Nor was the mill levy intended for student scholarships, with over 2000 now being funded and more announced to be added. Another 85 football scholarships and 85 Title IX scholarships funded out of two years increase in the mill levy only, would not affect a single professors’ honey pot, stipend, or professors’ travel or symposium expenses. Nor is there enough money in the mill levy to buy all the 9000 traditional students we have lost since the suspension of football at WSU.
The truth is, only the reinstatement of football will have the synergistic affect of drawing other traditional students to the university.
The Shocker Black and Golds have only one purpose, the remedying of the injustice that has so damaged the traditional student enrollment of our university for the last 20 years. President Beggs, personally, is not the issue; but his commitment to Hemenway not to reinstate football and not to ask for a single dollar on the State’s Board of Regents Capital Improvement Budget, resulting in uniquely double taxing Sedgwick County Tax payers from all other counties in the state, is.
We have consistently opposed president Beggs on these issues, and we will not unsay a single word we have previously said and factually supported. And president Beggs can be president for life as far as we are concerned. But on the issues for which we question his loyalty and disparage him: reinstating football, and asking for our fair share of the States Capital Improvement Budget; if Beggs invaded Hell with his negative program for WSU on these issues, we would make at least a favorable reference to the Devil on our web site.
SHOCKER BLACK & GOLDS
By:
Fred Marrs
VISIT: www.Alumnishockerblackandgolds.com