ALMA MATER SENDS MIXED MESSAGE WITH NEW SPORTS STADIUM

Word is the Queen's Golden Gaels were unveiling architects' drawings of the new Richardson Stadium uring the football team's recent fundraising golf tournament. (There's a thread at CIS Football.org.)

It's a mixed message, at best, and it's hard for yours truly not get a little wound-up about it since there is, admittedly, a somewhat childish attachment to the Golden Gaels, particularly the football team.

News that the current Richardson Stadium -- a ramshackle place whose playing surface became almost unplayable during the playoffs three years ago -- will be replaced is great news for a fan of the team. Plus, if you look around, this isn't happening in a vacuum. Other universities in Ontario and across Canada have bought in to the NCAA mode of thinking that you have to have these shiny new facilities so you can "compete" for student-athletes.

Never mind that $5 million put toward a sports facility that may only be used by a small percentage of students isn't as good an investment as maintaining or upgrading academic buildings. There's no maybe about that.

Like everything else, it comes down to politics. My friend Greg Hughes and I, as recent grads, will probably never get past the agree-to-disagree stage when it comes to what priority the university should give to its football program. He's got his points, and makes them very well, pointing out that these plans for a new outdoor stadium (along with football, Queen's successful men's and women's soccer teams would also play there, and other teams, female and male, would get new practice facilities) come while the university has academic buildings that are basically being held together with chewing gum and baling wire.

Three guesses which faculty occupies most of the buildings, and the first two don't count. It's the humanities.

In that context, well-heeled alumni giving money earmarked for a new outdoor sports stadium fairly reeks of being out of touch. It has the air of rich old white guys who have no idea that the same governments that create tax loopholes for them have also, over the past 15 years, created funding shortfalls and annual tuition hikes that have drastically altered the quality of student life and learning at university campuses across the country. However, that's for the government, the universities and the voters to solve.

It's not up to some rich guy who really likes sports to solve all that. That said, donating cash for an outdoor sports facility could be seen as tantamount to giving iPods to a starving family.

(That said, the belief sports success drives alumni support is a myth that has been exploded many times over. You could also argue that since most Queen's alumni did take an Arts degree, you could argue that instead of getting one rich guy to cut a $5,000 cheque for sports, you could get fifty or more $100 donations from arts grads if you acknowledged their interests.)

However, then there's the tail-wagging-the-dog and the "Yeah? And? So? What?" arguments. On the first count, like it or not, even in Canada a school's sports teams are part of its public perception. It is a bit of a face dance, and no one should ever choose a school based on the reputation of its football team, but how many people have had their image of the University of Toronto -- an elite research university if there ever was one -- coloured by its woeful football team, which hasn't won a game since 2001? How many people laugh at the U of T's football fortunes without realizing that perhaps that's the compromise it has made for maintaining its academic integrity?

At the opposite end of the spectrum, you look at the two major universities in Halifax, and the average Joe on the street will tell you Saint Mary's is superior to Dalhousie, since the former has a football team and a record of more success in the high-profile sports (hockey and basketball). From personal experience, students at SMU tend to take more pride in their school than those at Dal. Of course, the wiseass counterpoints to that is that universities are not competing to win the praise of the average Joe Sixpack, and that pride is usually a front for some buried insecurity. (In this case, Dalhousie's superior reputation, and full disclosure, technically I'm a Dal alum.)

As for the "Yeah? And? So? What?" arguments, if a bunch of quote-unquote rich old white guys' idea of helping the university move forward is to help get a new outdoor sports facility built, so be it.

You can't force people to back a cause that doesn't interest them. Odds are, they probably studied business or engineering before going on to make their megabucks, so it's a little unrealistic to expect some random Daddy Warbucks to lavish money on the humanities. Not every philanthropist has Bill Gates' social conscience, let alone his resources. Besides, a little austerity never hurt a creative person.

The bread-not-circus argument still prevails, though. Well, and this is not going to going over well with some people, but the academics and the idealists, not to overly generalize, need to drop the righteous indignation. (Especially when you consider where some of them get their research grants from, but that's for someone else to argue.)

What chaps their collective ass so badly is knowing, deep-down, that athletics resonates in our collective soul much more than any of their dissertations or experimental films ever have, or perhaps ever will.

Deep down, it bothers them that a Queen's football game brings together people who probably encompass a wider range of values and interests, than say, your typical honours English seminar. (Maybe it's changed since I was an undergrad, but the homogeneity of some of my English classes had to be seen to be believed.)It draws in the wider Kingston community more so than almost anything else the university does, and given its history of dodgy town-gown relations, that's not entirely bad.

It bothers them to see people form a consensus for a couple of hours while academic types tend to invariably get bogged down in semantics and splinter politics. To borrow a line from Annie Hall, it bothers them to see people who have body and mind working together, while they spend their social time making fake insights with people who work for Dysentery magazine.

In a sense, athletics is the blood, sweats and tears extension of the liberal arts. So yes, the tail does wag the dog, even at Queen's. You can see where your stereotypical uptight academic would have a problem with this.

It is understandable that some people don't want to accept that no matter how much they deny it or try to say that today's students don't care, football did play a part in growing the university, did so for generations. It's part of Queen's identity, and while its place is constantly evolving, at the end of the day, it's there. When the university needs artwork to promote the school's spirit, almost always, what you see is a picture of a football crowd.

You can go to Richardson Stadium on a Saturday afternoon and feel like it's 2006, 1986 or 1966, even though the new stadium will be the third place where Richardson was stood. That's a unique feeling that you wouldn't dare put a price tag on.

Now some people do want to put a price tag on it. You can argue, and the point would be conceded here, that building a new outdoor stadium is pretty much a Cadillac façade on a Chevette, for good or ill. However, in the minds of some, you need that façade. They also have the means to see that sentiment, however misplaced and myopic, become reality. So it goes.

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.