After the names of those appointed to the committee charged with selecting the next UH football coach were made public, ASUH, the student government organization, protested the committee’s composition.
The students want two seats on the committee that will advise on the choice of the Warriors’ next football coach.
Associated Students of the University of Hawaii President Anna Koethe said the imposition of the mandatory $50 per semester student athletic fee earlier this year makes the students “stakeholders” in the program and has asked the Board of Regents and UH President M. R. C. Greenwood to seat two student members on the committee.
But the absence of students on the committee was only part of the picture.
In a December 8 letter from Robert V. Cooney, chairman of the Manoa Faculty Senate, complained that while the team represents the UH Manoa campus, Manoa is completely unrepresented on the search committee.
Cooney’s letter, addressed to UH President M.R.C. Greenwood, V-P Linda Johnsrud, and athletics director Jim Donovan, said:
This morning I read in the newspaper that a search committee had been formed to find a new head football coach for the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and to my amazement the committee not only did not have a single Manoa faculty member or student on it, but incredibly, did not contain a single Manoa representative from any level.
That’s right. Not a single member of the UH Manoa faculty, staff, or administration was named to the committee.
I imagine those who make such decisions now regret the embarrassing oversight, but it probably accurately reflects their view of the place of football at UH Manoa.
The problem is, apparently, that football is football, and doesn’t have much to do with rest of the campus or the educational mission of the university. The football team isn’t really part of the university, and it shows in decisions like this. It’s lodged in Manoa as a matter of appearance, and to be able to qualify its athletes as students, even if sometimes only nominally, and doesn’t have a role in the education mission. That wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t such a drain on UH resources, already spread pretty thin.
The makeup of the football coach search committee isn’t a comment on the sad state of the football program, but on the sad state of higher education.
As UH Professor David Johnson, a former all-American collegiate hockey player, wrote in a recent Star-Advertiser Op-Ed:
I like football and used to play the game, but I need to acknowledge that it is mostly entertainment. The outcome of any game is approximately as important as who wins the next episode of “Dancing with the Stars.”
Whether the University of Hawaii wins or loses does not matter in the sober scheme of things. Football is show business; for the people in Hawaii who care at all about the game, its chief value lies in how much it pleasures and amuses.
Universities used to be about education. Their main mission was to discover, preserve and disseminate knowledge, and to promote a culture of broad inquiry in and beyond the university.
Times have changed. Over the last several decades there has occurred a profound confusion of these values in Hawaii and almost everywhere else in America where Division I football and basketball are played. In many respects, the entertainment tail now wags the education dog at large American universities — and most people prefer it that way.
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Football is about money. Do the faculty and students have money to donate?
No money, no talk.
Student tuition contributes TWO MILLION DOLLARS a year to athletic scholarships. The Athletic Department has been bailed out by TEN MILLION DOLLARS in ‘loans’ from tuition and research funds.
No talk, no money.
It’s not only UH, look nearby to St Louis High School to see the same thing happening on a lower level.
The makeup of the search committee is a commentary on the current UH leadership. It’s what you get when you pick the only applicant that didn’t drop out.
What does it mean when Greenwood can make such an egregious and obvious mistake? It means either 1) she does not have an environment around her where people will speak up to point out a mistake, or 2) she has surrounded herself with people that were equally clueless as to not notice the omission as well. I have no insight as to which of these it is, but I see no other possible explanations.
In response, the UH administration was quoted as saying, ” Get off my lawn you darn kids.”
Don’t blame football.It is a fine game, one Hawaii loves statewide. Blame poor administrators, unfocused thinking and a broken system. I would be especially angry were I UH-Manoa student since they were put under a unilateral fee by the regents. Anyone out there remember the old taxation sans representation issue that triggered the American revolution?
I rarely get sucked into following the Rainbow football team (I know). I do enjoy the Wahine volleyball, however. The salaries paid to the football coach have shocked me, but I am told he is “worth it if he wins,” as a winning team brings in enough money to pay the salary.
Is anyone aware of a cold-eyed cost-benefit analysis of the UH athletic program? I’ve been told the program brings in enough money to pay for itself, but that is clearly false, unless “brings in” includes the $50 coerced out of each student.
I think what we may see happen is that, once a list of candidates ahs been winnowed down to, say, the top three or five, those names will be released, officially or otherwise, and there will be an opporunity for input from the unbathed masses that call UH Manoa home. Perhaps that will have been by design, perhaps it will be an attempt at saving their sorry okoles form a serious lack of leadership/foresight, but it may accopmplish what the stakelholders are seeking. Or not.
As an aside, or maybe as a foundatrional question, consider whether and to what extent this should be an open process. Hiring a university presdient is one thing, hiring a football coacjh is perhaps another. Will the list be made public from the get go? Does ythe committee have to promise confidentiality, at least to start, to protect those applicants who fear they will lose their current jobs if their employer finds out thaey have applied for the UH position? (Remember Jeff Jagodzinski, the BC football coach who got fired for merely speaking to a pro team?) If so, would inclusion of faculty and students, either by habit (public debate and discussion) or by law (Sunshine law), make this an entity that could not operate confidentially or even discreetly?
I agree completely that football, as much as I enjoy it generally, has assumed an importance completely out of proportion to reality, but it is business and it is the business that funds UH’s ability to meet its gender equity obligations under Title IX (thank you, Patsy Mink).
I’m only suggesting that, even for as sophisticated an audience as attrated by this blog, the issues are more nuanced than some of these comments indicate.
Ohia, like the committee that chose the systemwide president from among zero other options? True Russian balloting!
Hugh, you may be right; I’m just saying it’s not an automatic, A to Z with no letter stops in between question and answer, sort of conclusion.
Greenwood has been making a lot of little mistakes, saying one thing and then doing another, then claiming she forgot what she said in the first place. In a town run on personal connections, this gets old, as Dobelle found out.
Lord have M.R.C.!
Brandon, nice one.