ustxtxb_obs_1985_12_06_50_00023-00000_000.pdf

Printers Stationers Mailers Typesetters High Speed Web Offset Publication Press Counseling Designing Copy Writing Editing Trade Computer Sales and Services Complete Computer Data Processing Services *FUTURA PRESS AUSTIN TEXAS FILITIIJPIRLA 512/442-7836 1714 South Congress P.O. Box 3485 Austin, Texas 78764 university only to the extent that they see positive developments in the football team? If so, then just exactly how far are we prepared to go to attract their continued support? Will we, for example, allow them to influence policy regarding the minimum standard academic performance for a student’s continued participation in athletics? In short, just how many concessions are we prepared to make to be a minor league club for the N.F.L.? Obviously such alumni have not lately helped us any more than we seem to have originally helped them. For not only did we fail to instill in them the ability to make sound moral judgments, we didn’t even turn them into good hardheaded realists. By all appearances the boys with the slush-fund devised a less than totally clever scheme for the improvement of Frogball, since it was one which resulted almost immediately in their being blackmailed for ever greater payments by a bunch of players who subsequently continued to lose games at the same rate they had while still amateurs. And not smart enough to realize early on that they were doing nothing but giving away money, the alumni persisted in the plan until their actions became so widely known that it was impossible to avoid detection, an event which came at just the moment when Mr. Clean was about to lead the Frogs to glory. This is hard-headed realism? Of course it wasn’t supposed to work out that way. But how else could it have worked out? Surely their first course in history should have revealed to them that their loyalty, especially after you quit requires the continued loyalty of all establishing lifetime annuities for all mercenaries, their snitching is highly probable. Obviously the alumni in question missed that point in their studies here perhaps they skipped history that day to go to a pep rally. What can we learn from this? One lesson which is surely obvious is that you don’t always get what you pay for, especially when buying intangibles. Those alumni didn’t get what they paid for. And in a sense TCLJ didn’t get what it paid for when it turned over football recruiting to a bunch of good ol’ boys. The underlying theme here would seem to concern the attempt to measure success in monetary terms. Some things simply can’t be measured that way. These include things like the reputation of a university, the quality of education its students receive, and the diligence with which individuals pursue excellence in both work and play. Whether or not we are succeeding in our collective effort as a university cannot be adequately measured by the size of the surplus of revenue over expense. What benefits students actually receive from their classroom instructions do not vary directly with the cost of tuition. What the faculty gives in teaching and research is not a function of salary levels or enrollments. And how fast an 18-year-old can run with a football is not a matter of the size of his bribe. To assume the contraries of these principles is to ensure mediocrity, if not corruption. Of course there will always be people whose understanding of human motivation is so narrow that they will assume that anything can be bought. And from time to time they will succeed in seducing those who in fact know better. But at such times it is appropriate for the seducees to re-examine their own motives, to tidy up their own houses. Our house needs tidying: a university can have no room for those who are only in it for the money. THE TEXAS OBSERVER 23