Temple alumni and athletes respond to school’s decision to cut seven sports via online petitions
Last Friday, Temple University decided to cut seven of its 24 varsity sports programs after this academic year not only due to financial reasons but also concerns over student-athlete welfare, inadequate facilities and lack of compliance with Title IX.
Some experts say the cut are due to football’s lack of revenues Image/Video Screen Shot
The affected sports are baseball, which has an 84-year history at the university, softball, men’s crew, men’s indoor and outdoor track, women’s rowing and men’s gymnastics.
This decision has prompted a backlash that has sparked multiple Care2 petitions by alumni and athletes at the school.
Some examples include:
Alexander Gorski, an alumni of the men’s gymnastics team (2003-2008), created a petition to save the team from being cut which has gathered more than 7,000 signatures. He currently coaches women’s gymnastics, and says that cutting these programs can create a domino effect that has negative consequences to the Olympic level. “Athletes at the club level will leave the sport due to the lack of opportunity for a scholarship which will cause our Olympic team to weaken, since colleges are where gymnasts hone their skills to the Olympic level.”
Mario Dicarlo is a sophomore on the men’s crew team, and created a petition to save their rowing team, saying that it is “a family, who bleeds cherry and white!” That petition has more than 7,500 signatures. Dicarlo also cites Olympic hopes of Temple athletes as a reason for not cutting the program.
Two other petitions have also gained some traction – one supporting the baseball team, created by a father of a player, and one asking to save all of the sports that were cut, which was created by a current student athlete.
Temple said the cuts would save the school about $3 million from its $44 annual athletics department budget.
