Field hockey
It is possible that football fields will need new surfaces, that there will be less money than needed and that budget cuts will be instituted.
As it turns out for CMU though, all of those possibilities became realities this year.
In the shadow of severe budget cuts, CMU is spending $1.4 million fixing the football field and making a new place for field hockey to play. On the face of it, a person could reason that the administration is making judgments to favor athletics and paralyze academics.
That, however, does not seem reasonable.
The administration and Board of Trustees were practically forced into making these decisions because of safety precautions and Title IX. While there were other avenues, most were extreme and foolish.
Still, the university needs to be careful not to get hamstrung into making these types of decisions again — it could be dangerous to the future of CMU. As Trustee Jerry Campbell said about a new field hockey field, “I'm really concerned about the university. This is a non-academic area and we are cutting so much from academics.”
