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Show Separate,but equal? Intercollegiate athletics are back both as sport and as issue. And not just the won-loss won-loss record or the new million-dollar million-dollar carpet for the stadium. The ASUU Assembly last month froze its $249,250 appropriation ap-propriation to the Department of Athletics, refusing to spend any money on athletics until a line-item budget was submitted. sub-mitted. Apparently this will soon be done, and $5 per student stu-dent per quarter will again flow into the coffers of athletic ath-letic director Bud Jack's kingdom. king-dom. But the question of priorities, pri-orities, of course, remains. About half of the total $1.2 million athletics budget goes, directly or indirectly, for football. foot-ball. Part of this nobody knows how much supports a separate freshman football team. Os Last year the National Collegiate Col-legiate Athletics Association (NCAA) decided to allow, as an economy measure, freshmen fresh-men to play on varsity teams. The University in turn, decided r that we didn't need to economize econo-mize we could still afford freshman teams. This decision appears to have been the result not of detailed study, but a preconceived precon-ceived opinion. Freshman athletic ath-letic programs will remain as training grounds for young, inexperienced athletes. Considering the rising demands de-mands for essential academic and student service programs, careful examination should be made of the wisdom of maintaining main-taining an expensive freshman fresh-man team after its prime reason for existence the - restrictive eligibility rule disappears. The administration and the Department of Athletics, in conjunction with ASUU, should press for a review among the eight member schools of the Western Athletic Conference concerning the desirability, and the proper emphasis, of separate freshman intercolleg-iate intercolleg-iate athletic teams. |