What ghostofdylan is referring to is bylaws.
The Athletic Board is made up almost entirely of faculty. On the 15 (i think) member Board, there are two students, one alumni, and one "community" seat. Rest are faculty.
In the bylaws, it requires the Search and Screen Committee to be made up in a similar fashion, with over one-half of the members required to be faculty.
I guess the best way to put it is my first meeting as a member of the Athletic Board as a student in April, 2008. After introducing me, the head of the board then scolded nobody in general, saying that the Athletic Board was more than just a way for faculty to get free tickets to basketball games. Over my time there, several people showed up once or twice over the course of the year, despite the fact that meetings were once a month in the morning before classes started.
To put it simply, there seemed to be a lack of care or passion for the Board among the members during my time. I thought it was so cool, to be able to take part in important decisions and studies. I didn't get that feeling from most of the people that were there.
The Athletic Board dwelled on things that certain members cared about more than others, instead of the program. For instance, the Equity Committee came back from a study and told the Board that the Panthers' equity and diversity was outstanding. Despite this golden review, two faculty members of the board took up over half of the meeting's time complaining that there wasn't enough diversity. When one of them turned out to be complaining because his daughter wasn't recruited to the track team, he was not happy when I told him that she likely didn't have the talent that Pete was looking for in her event. He didn't think it should matter because she was a great student and she's black. When I let him know that we had many excellent student-athletes who were young black women, he finally dropped it. Thirty minutes later.
The Athletic Board should be about the program, making the program better and streamlining the process to make sure they can achieve those goals.
Let's take the
latest minutes, from December's meeting:
- Updates on how sports are doing. Why can't these things, that take up valuable time in the Board meetings, be handled by a sheet of paper given to all of the board members at the beginning of the meeting? Do we really need to take up board meeting time to let the members know that the track team took 2nd at the Iowa Relays?
- Non-conference scheduling. it's just "Hey, the women's basketball team is playing Oklahoma and Baylor. They're tough." Thanks, this info shouldn't take up Board time - give it to them on a sheet of paper.
- Seg fee request process is ongoing. Good! Talk about it! This is something that should be expanded upon, and it's given barely any time because the Board needed to be told that volleyball lost their NCAA tournament game! The board should know about this process. What are the SFC's demands from athletics? How are you meeting those demands? What is our goal from SFC? What is your pitch to the SFC? Why is this not talked about more? The Board should weigh in - faculty members are familiar with asking for money, they could have valuable input.
Kathy Litzau
- SAAC Snack-a-thon, Career Day, Awards event. These are all things that, like the sports updates, can be given to the members in a packet. The only mention during the meeting should be that the department requests Board member presence at the Awards event. That's quick, concise, and takes 1/1,000th of the board meeting time.
- Strategic plan update. It says athletics is working closely with B&D. How so? A good 5-10 minutes of the meeting should be discussing this project, since it shapes the future of the athletic department. It's given a mention and promise for details at a future meeting. BS. The Board members should be privy to this.
Charlie Gross
This is the one person so far whose entire presentation to the board is worthwhile and relevant.
Kevin Fitzgerald
K-Fitz just made mention that the G&C Subcommittee was meeting soon. Good enough for me. Didn't take up time with anything irrelevant.
Phyllis King
Mentioning her ongoing project with admissions is worthwhile.
Out of all these reports, they each had important information, but only the last three didn't report something that was superfluous and could be included in a packet. The Board only meets once a month for a short 1-2 hour meeting. This should be fixed.
Point is, in an hour and a half, the Athletic Board didn't accomplish much. They were updated on some things, but they didn't accomplish any real work or participate in discussion on things that needed to be discussed that were in the minutes. The Athletic Board is meant to have oversight on the department, one of the reasons
This is the body that's supposed to set goals for the program. These people should set the goals of 6k attendance average over the course of the year, or the goal of getting to the NCAA Tournament at least once every four years, or the goal of building the arena by 2016. They set the goals, the department works to meet those goals. And when they have trouble meeting those goals, they answer to the Athletic Board.
Faculty members, at least a good portion of the ones that serve on the athletic board, don't care about these things. Like the former board president said at my first meeting, for a lot of them it's a way to get free tickets to basketball games.
At the very least, these board members should be replaced by the people Freak talks about - the ones who, like me, go to a lot of the non-revenue sports and have their finger on the pulse of the program. But those faculty members aren't on the Athletics Board.
So the board needs to be made up of people who do care about the program, passionately. Where's Lou? Fran? Steve King? David Nicholas? Frank Kalbel? Andy Schlesinger? Why aren't they on this? Why aren't Freak, or GhostofDylan, or Ken Peterson on there?
The board bylaws state that the S&SC needs to be majority faculty. Why? Shouldn't it be a majority of people who care about the program? Alumni, "community" members, people that have a fire in their eyes about picking the right person to lead the department? People who won't just co-write some stock questions for applicants, but ask hard questions to find out exactly what they need to know to endorse a certain candidate.
When you get the S&SC made up of faculty, you get requirements for an athletic director that include that applicants need to have worked in collegiate athletics. Why? Pat Richter had NO athletics experience when he became AD at Wisconsin. Same for Michigan's current AD.
Sorry for the vent. But things need to change to make sure other things go the right way.
