By Christina Littlefield
Graduate Assistant
Club sports are fighting for the money they need to play this year as a structural reorganization of the Inter-Club Council within the Student Government Association has left them a much smaller percentage of the $20,000 pie allocated from student fees.
Some club sports presidents who met Wednesday night expressed frustration and anger over the funding cuts that they said might eliminate their sports.
The restructuring, which separated club sports out into their own council from the larger ICC, has left the 12 official club sports on campus and the various stragglers that are still submitting paperwork with $5,000 to split for the semester, Student Activities Director Doug Hurley said. Next semester, according to an information sheet made by Student Activities Coordinator Nicole Phillips, the amount the council gets is expected to be reduced to $2,000.
Split 12 ways or more, that amount will leave the club sports with enough money to perhaps pay one referee for one game or mark the field in preparation of play, club sport presidents said in their first meeting Wednesday.
“I think a lot of club sports are going to suffer and die,” crew club president Joel Dons said.
In previous years as part of ICC, club sports like crew received $1,200 a semester to help cover expenses. Even then, clubs were lucky if the allocated money covered even the maximum 25 percent of their budget allowed by the ICC Constitution. Now, crew will most likely receive a few hundred this semester and significantly less next spring, Dons said.
One reason for the restructuring, according to ICC Chair and SGA Vice President Giuseppe Nespoli, was a desire to ease some of the hoops the clubs have to jump through. Under the ICC, club sports had to register with both Student Activities and Intramurals, he said. Now, as their own council, club sports only answer to Intramurals, but they are given less funding.
Nespoli said the change has been in discussion with Phillips and SGA president Ben Elliott and that he wrote the proposal to alter how ICC funding works. Nespoli said an administrator approved the final changes, but he was not sure who.
Hurley, who assumed his position after the changes were made, told the presidents Wednesday that he did not know who approved the proposal or the exact reasons why. At the meeting club presidents referred to who made the changes as a mysterious “they.”
Nicole Phillips did not return attempts to reach her.
“Information hasn’t been forthcoming, everyone has been kept in the dark,” rugby president Christian Zouien said.
Most of what club sport presidents had heard was hearsay and rumor until the informational meeting with Hurley and temporary Intramurals Coordinator Matt Kalish, Zouien said.
Another reason for the change given in the information sheet developed by Phillips is that more than 40 clubs are now petitioning the ICC for money. Clubs are only allowed to request funds for 25 percent of their events budget, Nespoli said, as ICC strives to promote activities that are inclusive of a majority of the student body. Yet of the $15,000 available, clubs have already put in requests for $35,000.
Who gets what will be duked out at the ICC budget meeting, notorious in the past for being divisive and controversial as clubs fight for scarce funding. Nespoli said the money will be allocated to clubs hosting events that include the most students.
He also said that it was unlikely that the ICC would follow through on the proposal to reduce club sport funding to $2,000 next spring.
“We want to make sure that everyone is benefiting,” Nespoli said. “We don’t want to sell any of the clubs short, not even sports clubs.”
Club sports, however, are in a cloud of confusion as they grapple with the changes and how they should structure the new council.
The group opted to submit budget requests to divide the money they are getting at a meeting next Wednesday, as a few of the clubs such as men’s soccer are almost finished with its season and need the funding now. The team played without uniforms for its first three games until they could collect individual dues, soccer president Brad Kuske said.
The soccer team was one of many that said club sports should be funded because they represent the university in competition with other schools. To not have uniforms makes the whole university look bad.
“We just want to look like a team,” said Ghavinn Crutcher, who plays for men’s soccer in the fall and rugby in the spring. “We want to represent the university as we should.”
Dons, of the crew club, wants the council to submit a resolution to SGA for more funding, possibly through a student fee increase specifically for ICC and the Sports Club Council.
“They are spreading themselves too thin financially,” he said.
Some of the money from the $10 fee increase two years ago was to be set aside for ICC, but the amount of clubs in the organization has almost doubled in that time.
Hurley, Kalish and Nespoli all encouraged the council to petition SGA. Hurley and Kalish, however, also stressed the need for club sports to raise some of their own money by selling T-shirts, doing car washes or getting sponsors.
“There are opportunities out there for all of us to raise a little bit more money and get the help you need,” Kalish said at the meeting. “We want to be available to help you with that.”
Zouein said the rugby team will scrape by this semester, but that he worries about the long-term affect on the sport. He said he chose to come to Pepperdine because it offered rugby.
“If you can’t fund our sports, you are going to kill our sports,” Zouein said. “Maybe we can get sponsorships, but if we don’t we can’t play.”
The funding loss comes at a time when participation in club sports has skyrocketed, club presidents said. Zouein and Kuske estimate that some 80 to 90 people attend their games. Most of the clubs have at least 20 members, though Kalish stressed the need at the meeting to get an accurate count from all of the clubs as to total student involvement to show that club sports are inclusive of students as the presidents argue.
He stresses, however, that it is up to the club sport representatives to work together as a council to raise money.
“I think its great that the club sports get to fight together,” Kalish said.
Ocotber 03, 2002