The Middle States Commission on Higher Education held open hearings on Tuesday, March 11. The purpose was to determine whether or not Rutgers deserves to retain its current accreditation.

BOG Chair William Howard explains Rutgers' urgent need for stadium seats and corporate skyboxes to a recent meeting.

At the hearings, opponents of the Schiano-Mulcahy stadium expansion testified before the Commission at length about

(1) the attempt to squander $100+ million on a Schiano-mandated stadium expansion at a time when the university is suffering grievously from a $64 million budget shortfall;

(2) the exorbitant salaries bestowed on football coach Schiano and basketball coach Stringer at a time when six teams in the "participatory" sports have been eliminated, when over 300 classes have been cut, and when undergraduate tuition has been raised substantially;

(3) the serious damage done to Rutgers as an old and distinguished university by a Scarlet R-dominated Board of Governors, including its waste of $200-300 million on "big time" athletics, since its ill-judged venture into the "Big East" conference in 1994, and

(4) the ongoing decline of academic and intellectual values as a consequence of commercialized Div IA athletics at Rutgers.

We urge the Commission to take this testimony into account when deciding on accreditation. In particular, we urge the Commission to withhold accreditation until Rutgers agrees to sever its current association with the University of South Florida, Louisville, Cincinnati, and similar institutions and to resume competing against Colgate, Princeton, Lafayette, Columbia, and other schools who were its traditional athletics rivals for over a century.

The college that has a sports program for any other reason than an educational reason is soon going to lose control of the program.

If the college goes in for sports as a part of a program of public entertainment and public relations, then the public will dictate the kind of entertainment it wants.

If the reason is fund-raising, then the fund-raisers and the potential donors will dictate the program.

Whatever the reason may be, the college has lost control, including the control of those parts of its education policy which are related, such as admissions.

Mason Welch Gross