The Athletics Department is working with administrators and students in the Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate to raise the university's recognition and funding of club sports on campus.
University officials and senators hope to set up an advisory board composed of club sport athletes and leaders from the TCU Senate and Judiciary. The board, which would help to approve club sports and appropriate their funding, is meant to broaden the presence of club sports on campus.
TCU senators, Athletics Department officials and Dean of Student Affairs Bruce Reitman met to review plans for the project at a meeting on Feb. 13.
"We just discussed a way to solidify the presence of club sports on campus and to fund, recognize and allocate resources to club sports fairly and in a safe way," said junior and TCU President Neil DiBiase.
The process by which the university officially recognizes clubs will change, according to Director of Athletics Bill Gehling. In the past, student teams would appeal to him for approval, and a faculty committee on athletics would play a role as well. Now the university wants to incorporate more student input and to increase the number of club sports teams on campus.
"We are working to create a council, if you will, to look at this decision-making process and come up with a mechanism to make decisions and allow as many people as possible to participate in recreational club sport activities," Gehling said.
DiBiase said that he hopes the club advisory board will satisfy student needs.
"It will be a kind of student board that will be responsible for recognizing, funding, monitoring and allocating resources to club sports on campus," he said. "Hopefully [it] can look at what students want on the whole ... We all pay a student activities fee, and we should be able to use it. It should be fairly distributed."
DiBiase hopes the new system will be implemented by the fall semester.
There are 11 officially recognized club sports, including ultimate Frisbee, co-ed water polo, fencing, cycling and equestrian, according to the Athletics Department's Web site.
Gehling said that meeting attendees spoke at length about the process of approving club sports.
"I think that there has been some confusion about who oversees club sports and approves them," he said. "The Senate kind of got themselves into a position where people would come to them for approval when [the Senate] didn't have [this] power. It's a misconception. A lot of students think that the Senate approves clubs, so why is a club sport any
different?"
The Athletics Department currently allocates funding to club teams that have been officially recognized by the university. According to Gehling, there are a few athletic clubs on campus that have not been approved, such as a student boxing group and club teams in lacrosse, soccer and tennis. These teams are responsible for their own budgets.
This is a long-standing system, according to Gehling. "We have had a system in place for a number of years developed by student club sport leaders in conjunction with members of the athletic department," he said. "They have a whole set of equations in place to determine which sports get how much money."
He explained that the funding teams receive depends on the number of participants as well as the club sport's expenses. A number of teams do fundraising on their own to buttress the university funding.
"We face challenges of limited resources," Gehling said. "These can include not just money but field space, indoor facility space, sports medicine support staffing ... They all set a limit on how many programs we can support at a reasonable level. Adding too many programs can force you to diminish what you offer."
Gehling said that Tufts, like most other Div. III schools, only offers most sports at the varsity and intramural levels, due to a lack of
resources.
"If you look at the Div. III world, it is extremely rare that you will see a varsity and club [team] in the same sport," he said. "It's because we all face the same sort of resource limitations."
According to DiBiase, administrators and members of the Senate will meet again before spring break to discuss plans for the creation of the student committee.
"I really hope to nail down some logistics," he said. "We're going to have limited time after spring break to set it up, bring people together. Hopefully we'll have this up and running by the fall."
