North Carolina State University Athletics
A Productive Partnership (9/23/08)
9/23/2008 12:00:00 AM | Pack Athletics
This week, the athletics department will go before the Student Fees Committee to request an increase in the the amount NC State students pay for the opportunity to attend Wolfpack athletic events. These fees, which help fund the athletics department’s operating budget and service debt on facilities, go back more than a century.
NC State College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts first asked its students to implement an athletics fee in 1903, requesting $1 per term to pay for athletics expenses. The school’s Athletics Committee reduced that request to $1 per year for the 500 or so full-time students enrolled in the school at the time. The faculty approved fees that were to be gathered for “gymnastic and bathroom purposes.”
The person who spear-headed this request was the football team manager and player, Oliver Max Gardner. He then went to the Board of Trustees to ask for matching monies from the general fund. That request was approved, and the athletics committee used its $1,000 budget to hire the school's first full-time coach, William Kienholtz of
The next year, Kienholtz left and Gardner still a student went to the athletics committee and asked to double the student athletic fee so the school could hire another full-time coach, George W. Whitney from Cornell. In his only season at the school, Whitney led the Red Terrors to a 4-1-1 record, the most successful season since the school began sponsoring football in 1893.
So began a long tradition of student fees contributing to the success of our athletics programs here at NC State.
I find it intriguing that the students originally asked the administration to impose these fees -- they were anxious to find a way to fund something that was important to them. Of course this
When we go to the Student Fees Committee, we are asking for a $25.50 operations fee increase per student to augment the athletics department budget, which is roughly $43 million per year. We are also asking for a $30 increase in debt service to help pay for the final improvements needed to cap the efforts made over the last decade by the athletics department and the NC State Student Aid Association.
These additional funds are vitally important to the future of our program and our ability to adequately fund our 23 varsity sports and support our 550 student-athletes.
If the entire $55.50 fee increase is approved the committee will vote to grant us all, some or none of our request NC State would still have the lowest athletics fee in the 16-school
Over the last decade, we have asked all members of the Wolfpack Club to increase their financial commitments so we can improve our facilities. Just about everyone, from our largest donors to our newest members, has stepped up to the plate and pledged support to pay for more than $100 million in improvements to Carter-Finley Stadium, a $5 million renovation to Doak Field at Dail Park and a substantial renovation to Reynolds Coliseum. We have built a new tennis complex, a softball stadium, a new track and an indoor basketball practice facility. And we have enhanced the Weisiger-Brown facility to better support our athletics department staff and several varsity sports.
Just as we have asked our biggest fans to dig a little deeper to help improve all facets of NC State athletics, we are asking the students to increase their commitment as well. We can not meet the continuing increasing financial needs of all our varsity sports programs without the support our student body.
Let’s show our rivals the power of partnership at NC State.
Lee Fowler
