Fund Club Sports

This year, the number of club sports applying for Undergraduate Council funding rose by 60 percent. The UC has raised its funding of these groups to record levels, to nearly $50,000 a year, but the clubs are still underfunded by the Athletics Department. While the UC’s generosity seems to bode well for club sports, the news hides a disappointing revelation—that the Athletics Department has slashed the maximum amount of funding allotted to each club sport, leaving the UC holding the bag.

Club sports are an important part of university life for many undergraduates. Varsity sports teams by design can accommodate only a small fraction of the student body. Hundreds of other students participate in the 65 club teams recognized by the Athletics department, from Aikikai to Xfit. These groups are essential not only to the physical health of the student body, but also to mental health. The Athletics Department seems to agree and its handbook claims: “Club sports foster the development of sound leisure values and a feeling of belonging and understanding between individuals and groups.”

The Athletics Department cuts reveal an essential hypocrisy: that the university lowers funding for the same student groups that it highlights in its promotional materials to prospective students. The College’s Admissions website prominently highlights the range of club sports in two separate pages: “Choosing Harvard” and “Student residential life.” “Harvard Athletics offers 42 Division I intercollegiate varsity teams…as well as numerous club/intramural sports,” it reads. The university cannot have things both ways. If the Athletics Department views club sports as one of its main selling points, it should not ask others to fund them.

This year more than ever, the cash-strapped UC has to make painful and unnecessary budgetary trade-offs. In addition to the $50,000 spent on club sports, the UC funds and supervises most student activities on campus. Its budget of less than $500,000 per year is funded entirely by a term bill fee, unchanged since 2006. Over the past year UC President Gus Mayopolous has loudly pushed for an additional $250,000 of funding from the administration, meeting with President Faust last February, but was flat-out denied.

As long as the UC is operating under a budget constraint, its first priority should be to fund mandates that are not under the purview of other parts of the university. If the Athletics Department refuses to maintain funding levels for club sports, the UC should not feel pressure to make up the difference. The Athletics Department is failing to do its fair share.