Unless there is more transparency and information provided to the University Senate Committee on Budget and Fiscal Affairs, progress will remain minimal and these issues will not be resolved.

During Wednesday’s senate meeting, the committee requested more information from both the university and Syracuse University Athletics, and said it wasn’t able to make decisions based off the information it had at the time.

The committee was expecting to use information from a report by Bain & Co., which was supposed to be released in February, but still remains unavailable. The committee was also hoping to use information from an annual salary report, which hasn’t been made available to the committee.

As a result of this lack of transparency, the committee is lacking sufficient information, which leads to an inability to provide the best insight and recommendations.

A lack of information prevents the committee from properly doing its job to better the university.  It is counter-productive to have a committee that makes recommendations on the budget without sufficient information to do so.

The committee also asked for more information from SU Athletics regarding its fiscal policies, such as revenue allocations, funding for expansion and the ramifications of a student athlete union. Without specific details from SU Athletics, the senate could not make any formal decisions or recommendations on these issues.

No representatives from SU Athletics spoke at the meeting.

Since SU Athletics is both one of the most highly profitable and costly programs for Syracuse University, there should be more open discussion between the department and the Committee on Budget and Fiscal Affairs.

USen meetings are the best opportunity for issues like these to be discussed, as important members of the SU community – including Chancellor Kent Syverud – are present.

Although USen meetings are monthly, this was the last meeting of the semester. Now, the committee will not have an opportunity to continue discussion on these issues and make formal recommendation until the first meeting of the fall semester, which won’t happen for at least another four months.

With a lack of transparency and information from both the university and SU Athletics, the two missed a major opportunity, making this month’s USen discussions on the issues ineffective. The two groups must provide the proper information to allow USen to make progress in the future.

Published on April 17, 2014 at 1:00 am