Club sports coming up short

On Jan. 9 the IU Athletic Department announced that it would immediately begin charging $500 per week for the eight club sports teams that use the John Mellencamp Pavilion for their practices. The teams have shared use of the facility between 10 p.m. and 1 a.m. Monday through Thursday since Spring 2006, and until this month they had been able to do so free of charge.\nLuckily for the club sports teams, the Club Sports Federation has offered to provide the approximately $4,000 it will take to pay for the eight teams to keep practicing indoors until March 6, by dipping into their emergency fund. Hopefully an actual emergency doesn’t come up for club sports — one that involves more than carelessness on the Athletic Department’s part, that is.\nWe can safely assume that the IU Athletic Department actually needs the money and isn’t just trying to weasel more profits out of the students. It’s not entirely illegitimate to ask for some payment, as the facilities do belong to the university after all. We know that the university incurs costs in maintaining these facilities, and there would have undoubtedly been an enormous outcry if the department had raised student fees to pay for these needs. However, does it really need cash so desperately that it couldn’t give club sports more than a week’s notice to come up with the money? Kathy Bayless, director of campus recreational sports, said there was talk of possibly implementing a fee as early as October, but it was assumed that it wouldn’t begin until next year, if at all. $500 a week is a lot of money for club sports teams, who have to fund raise and charge dues to afford jerseys, tournament fees and travel expenses. To spring it on them out of the blue shows a genuine lack of respect on the Athletic Department’s part. A reasonable amount of warning for a change like this would have been a year, or at the very least a semester. \nFurthermore, if the Athletic Department wanted to demonstrate that it values its club sports teams, a change like this would involve discussion panels, payment options, advance notice and certainly a contract citing actual facts and figures. The Club Sports Federation was only notified through a vague phone call from the Athletic Department. Frankly, that’s laughably unprofessional. It’s uncalled for. This is a university that chooses to advertise the existence and abundance of its club sports programs to potential freshmen. Because of that, it should treat them with the respect they deserve. These teams travel all across the country, boasting that they are from IU and wearing the cream and crimson. Perhaps the university should try giving them a little bit of the same credit when making plans that will affect the teams. If they have time to look up from the varsity men’s basketball game, that is.