Athletics presents budget to student board

Students camp out for them — in some cases, donors pay large amounts of money for them — and last night, the Student and Incidental Fee Committee reviewed and tentatively passed the fee for student tickets to athletic events for the 2014 fiscal year.

The athletic budget looks quite different from the other budgets the committee reviews. Mostly, this is because most of the athletics fund comes from other sources like private funds, Pac 12 Networks and ticket sales amounting to 72 percent of revenue, compared to the 5 percent from student fees. Another distinction lies in the data trends. Where most departments show predictable growth, ticket distribution fluctuates unpredictably from year to year.

The committee’s task is to provide enough tickets for everyone to attend, but at the same time, to not overestimate ticket numbers. If the committee lowballs its ticket numbers, the tickets will be given to non-students, generating more revenue for the university. The department maintains the same figures for student tickets, to account for the fluctuation of attendance from year to year.

By paying the athletic student fee, students receive tickets at half of their market value, based on the number of tickets allotted to students.

Josh Smith, a senior on the OSU men’s soccer team, and Lauren Fisher, a sophomore on the women’s golf team, presented the budget.

“It went smoothly,” Smith said. “Both the athletic department and the student fee committee see it as a pretty good deal for students.”

The presenters requested a student fee set to $37.30 for athletics for fall, winter and spring terms for the 2013-14 academic year. The budget would lower the current fee by $3.68. The reason for the decrease comes from the growing student population.

“The athletics budget is fairly static, but the change in student population has made for a lower student fee,” said Marianne Vydra, senior associate athletic director.

Vydra discussed the presentation with the committee, addressing board members’ questions. Members asked about how often athletics promotes student events sponsored by the Associated Students of Oregon State University. Vydra responded by saying athletics allows ASOSU many options, including flyers and video board announcements across all athletic events.

Brad Alvarez, committee chair, also requested trends in ticket pick-up by students over the past few years to see how many are picked up versus the amount available. Vydra said they could present those trends prior to the final hearing.

Athletics’ work with the committee in years past was more difficult than this year, Vydra said.

“Last year our budget was tentatively approved, then readjusted at the final hearing,” Vydra said. “[The committee] has been much more transparent this year.”

Alvarez said he hopes for a better relationship with athletics over the coming years, and will try to improve next year, as he helps start next year’s committee.

“We will review them over the next year and a half,” Alvarez said. “By then we will try to have a more comprehensive plan.”

Videos of the committee meetings can be found on KBVR’s YouTube channel, youtube.com/user/KBVR26.

Jack Lammers, news editor
On Twitter @jacklammers
news@dailybarometer.com