A victory for students was snatched from jaws of conceit

With a precious few free minutes to squeeze in some extra study time before an exam at Winston-Salem State University, Cynthia Tart was focused Friday morning on the heavy textbooks weighing down her oversize bag and not the potential lightening of her wallet being considered by the UNC board of governors 80 miles away in Chapel Hill.

"I heard about it, but I haven't had a lot of time to think about it," Tart said shortly after leaving an early class. "I'm barely covering my bills as is, so it'd be another strain, that's for sure."

"It" was the whopping 31.3 percent increase in the student athletics fee that university officials had sought from the board of governors to support an ill-advised move to Division I.

The proposal would have raised WSSU's athletics fee to $760, up from the current $579 that is built into the (roughly) $3,800 annual bill for in-state tuition and assorted fees.

"It'd be a terribly big bite for me and people like me," said Tart, 53, who is a full-time student who's studying gerontology. "What about the people who don't participate or don't have the time to participate? It just doesn't excite me. I have a job to keep up with, too."

Maintaining focus

Forcing students such as Tart to support an athletics program that's running a deficit would have been a crime in this economic climate.

In addition to carrying 12 classroom hours a week this semester, Tart works three 12-hour overnight shifts as a health-care worker.

She couldn't care less whether WSSU's teams compete in the Division I MEAC, the Division II CIAA or any of the other athletics alphabet-soup leagues.

Tart enrolled at WSSU to learn and to improve her standing in the job market by getting the bachelor's degree that she has been coveting for years.

"Education has always been my No. 1 thing," she said. "Even after I dropped out of high school to go to work, I knew I had to get back to school."

After dropping out of the old Atkins High School, Tart earned the equivalent of a high-school diploma at Forsyth Tech in 1973. She followed it up by getting her license as a certified nurse assistant from Forsyth Tech in 1986, and a CNA II license after that.

In the mid-1990s, she studied to become a licensed practical nurse, and she briefly enrolled at WSSU in an attempt to earn a bachelor-of-science degree in nursing. "I had to drop that plan due to financial issues," she said.

Still, she persisted and came back to Winston-Salem State in 2005. But you won't catch her in the student section at football or basketball games.

"I can't keep up with these kids anyway," she said with a laugh. "Me -- I have to maintain my focus so I can get through. It takes all my energy."

‘Revenue' sports

Rather than taking a bite out of students for a fee that would have left WSSU trailing only UNC Asheville in athletics fees in the UNC system, the board of governors voted to approve a 4 percent tuition increase for WSSU.

By doing so, UNC President Erskine Bowles and board members demonstrated far more concern for the students than some WSSU officials whose heads were swollen by pipe dreams of big-time athletics success.

Money from tuition increases mainly goes toward academics. WSSU officials had proposed keeping tuition flat while raising the athletics fee -- money that would have gone straight to an athletics program projected to be running a $1.5 million deficit this year alone.

It costs the university about $15,000 per game to rent Bowman Gray Stadium and about $3,500 to rent the Coliseum or the Coliseum Annex. Shouldn't the alleged "revenue sports" have generated some revenue before officials committing to a move to Division I?

The turnout in the Annex for WSSU's game against Coppin State Monday night was so meager that a late arrival could have found a seat in the first five rows.

A $760 athletics fee might not have seemed like a lot to a handful of fat-cat boosters and head-in-the-clouds WSSU officials, but for full-time undergraduate students who juggle work and school -- 86 percent of whom receive some form of financial aid -- it would have been a tough pill to stomach.

■ Scott Sexton can be reached at 727-7481 or at ssexton@wsjournal.com.