With skepticism of Ohio athletics at such a high point, it is difficult to criticize a move that would help to prop up the sagging programs. But, with the university in such a budget crunch, even the modest $500,000 increase recently awarded to athletics sends the wrong message, and administrators should be sensitive to the needs of other departments.
That is not to say athletics do not need or deserve more funds. Ohio's sports program, 10th in total spending in a 12-team league, is one of the most poorly funded in the Mid-American Conference. Miami, the Bobcats' chief rival, spends roughly $3 million more per year on athletics as opposed to its green and white rivals. Outgoing Ohio President Robert Glidden had a point when he told The Post that without sports the university would lose a lot of national and statewide visibility. Six straight years of cuts in the athletics budget is difficult to swallow.
This does not, however, justify increasing athletic funding. Not with academic programs all suffering across-the-board 1.7-percent cuts. To cut almost everywhere else but increase funding to athletics, or any other department, seems unfair. A more reasonable solution would have been to end and freeze the cuts in the athletic budget.
Rumsfeld deserves the boot
Revulsion best describes the public and political reaction to the pictures slowly filtering out of Iraq. Accountability for the gross abuses must of course fall on those directly responsible, but also on their commanding officers. In this case, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld must either resign or be fired by President Bush.
Rumsfeld's removal is necessary more for his failure to do his job than his responsibility for the criminal actions of some military personnel. Before setting the White House spin machine in full swing to attempt damage control, President Bush seemed outraged at the fact Rumsfeld knew of the abuses in January, and yet he, the Commander in Chief, learned of the photos through the media. It is not a reach to say that in hiding the humiliating pictures, Rumsfeld was under-handed and derelict in his duty by not informing his boss of such an explosive and embarrassing issue. This alone should be enough to justify his replacement.
But Rumsfeld presents other problems. His detached and corporate style demanded the achievement of astronomical goals without the necessary manpower. While allowing for the quick conquest of Iraq, this made prisoner abuse more probable because low manpower likely caused occupation forces to maintain order through fear tactics. The public relations damage, which may be incalculable considering the strong taboos in Islamic culture concerning nudity and homosexual acts, was compounded by Rumsfeld's refusal to act swiftly when the first reports of abuse began to filter in. President Bush should remove Rumsfeld to tell the world that abuse and institutional deceit will not be tolerated.
Schoolteachers, not cybernannies
One thing teenagers have in common is a general disdain for some high school teachers and administrators. There are good ones and bad ones, and the words spoken about the bad ones might generally lack a certain sense of civilized decorum. While these authority figures have the full right to punish those who verbally attack them on school grounds, a little thing called free speech protects such consequences for those who complain in a public forum such as the Internet.
Lancaster High School was wrong to expel Thomas Seifert, a student who used his personal Web page to post what American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio litigation coordinator Gary Daniels called crude and tasteless but not troubling material, including pictures of school personnel and a message board. A school in Delaware made a similar decision before it realized it did not have the authority to punish the student. Unless the content involved hate speech, which it apparently did not (the Web site has been taken down), the school was wrong to expel Seifert. Rightly or wrongly, the Internet provides a medium where pretty much anyone can post whatever they choose, and Seifert's content, though not appropriate or mature, cannot legally result in expulsion.
17 Archives
The Post Editorial Board
