Dear Editor,
Over the past several years, the number of grants available to college students has diminished, leading many students to rely on loans. Many students now graduate from school with shocking levels of debt; some of my students owe more on undergraduate student loans than their professors owe on mortgages.
It is incomprehensible to me that ETSU would even suggest asking students who are already in debt to shoulder the cost of a resurrected
football program.
For students in general, $125 per semester is a tremendous amount of money; for art students, this kind of money could supply a semester’s worth of paint, or carving tools, or drawing paper
or darkroom supplies.
An issue that I have not heard raised in the various articles I have read about the student fee is the fact that many students will have to borrow this money, and pay it back with interest.
So, though the fee
on first glance appears to be $125, after eight semesters (and most students take longer than four years to get a degree), most students will end up funding football for over $1,000 each. This is a conservative estimate, without interest.
I find this scenario shameful. I have no problem with football, but believe the people who actually want it and can afford to pay for it
should get in line with their checkbooks.
Students who are strugling to pay for rent, food and school supplies, and who face an adulthood hampered by giant debt, should not be paying for football with borrowed money. As the financial advisor Suze Orman says: “If you don’t have the money, you can’t afford it.”
– Catherine Murray, Associate Professor, Art and Design

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