Faculty panel cries foul over baseball decision.

Byline: Greg Bolt The Register-Guard

Members of a faculty committee say the University of Oregon's new athletic director was wrong not to give them a chance to discuss his plan to drop wrestling and add baseball and competitive cheer before it was announced.

But Pat Kilkenny, who took over the post in March, said he complied with university rules by having confidential talks with the committee's chairman as the issue was being researched. He said it was necessary to keep a lid on the information to avoid putting the wrestling squad through unnecessary distress.

The clash is the first significant dust-up between Kilkenny and faculty members over athletic department management. It added to long-standing faculty concerns about how the university is run and generated two sharply worded commentaries by professors who believe that the UO is emphasizing athletics at the expense of academics.

It also highlighted some noticeable differences between Kilkenny's businesslike approach and the more public and often pointed debates that go on among the faculty and in the UO Senate. That's clearly not a style Kilkenny is accustomed to.

"I don't appreciate public attacks on your employer," he said of comments critical of UO President Dave Frohnmayer.

The disagreement is part of a larger debate on campus among a group of professors who believe that the university's reputation and academic quality are being damaged by the attention and resources going into athletics. More narrowly, some faculty members also are upset that Kilkenny made the decision without consulting the Intercollegiate Athletics Committee as required by Senate rules.

The committee does not have authority to overrule athletic department decisions, but the rule allows faculty views to be heard before major decisions are made.

Biology professor Nathan Tublitz, a committee member, said that simply informing the committee chairman was not sufficient.

"The athletic director had a responsibility to come to the full Intercollegiate Athletics Committee to consult on issues of adding or subtracting sports before a decision was made," Tublitz said. "That is in the charge and responsibility of the committee and it is something the athletic director agreed to do. So it is very disappointing to find out that the athletic director chose not to follow the established procedures within the university."

`We've reached out'

Both Tublitz and English professor James Earl wrote separate Op-Ed pieces critical of the decision and questioning whether Kilkenny will live up to pledges to work with the faculty on issues of athletic department oversight and management.

But Kilkenny said he has no problem working under the rules set by the Senate and said one of the charges he was given when he took the job was to bridge the gap between his department and the faculty. He said he has worked to meet both formally and informally with faculty and committees concerned about athletics.

"We've reached out many, many, many times," he said. "We believe it is a collaborative effort, and we value their opinions."

He defended his choice to keep the decision on baseball and wrestling quiet. He said it wasn't clear almost until the decision was made that the change would happen, and he didn't want to put wrestlers and their coaches through weeks of grueling speculation over something that might not go through.

"I had a lot of sensitivity to our coaches, staff and wrestlers," Kilkenny said. "If it got out that we were considering this, it would have been incredibly disruptive for them."

President backs Kilkenny

An ardent Duck fan who made millions in the insurance business, Kilkenny is working without a salary in what he calls a dream job, but one markedly different from the business world. He acknowledged that he was taken aback by the tenor of some comments on the matter.

"I didn't like some of the aspersions," he said, "because they were incorrect."

Math professor Jim Isenberg, chairman of the athletics committee until just before the baseball decision was announced, said he was briefed by Kilkenny before the decision but was asked to keep the matter confidential. He called that understandable but said Kilkenny should have included the full committee in the discussion.

He said that in such cases the panel should be allowed to receive information and discuss it on the condition that they not share it with anyone else.

"I strongly believe the committee needs to be consulted before a decision is announced," Isenberg said. "I think there should have been a debate."

Some members of the committee planned to meet with Kilkenny on Tuesday to discuss the decision and how future problems can be avoided.

Frohnmayer supported Kilkenny and said there was no intent to disregard the faculty's role in university affairs. The UO president said he personally was unaware of the Senate rule that requires consultation on such decisions.

"I simply didn't recall that at all," he said. "There wasn't any attempt to flout the Senate rule on this."

Perception of disparity 

While the decision raised some hackles, it's not clear that it has created a rift between Kilkenny and faculty. Many professors are away from campus at this time of year, and not all share the same level of concern over athletics.

Human physiology professor Paul van Donkelaar, vice president of the Senate and a member of the Intercollegiate Athletics Committee, agreed that the committee should have been consulted. But he said he's mostly happy with the relationship between faculty and the athletic department and recognizes that the department operates in a different environment.

He said much of the concern faculty members have over the decision stems from a perception that athletics are better funded than academics.

"We don't have as nice of facilities as the athletic department does. We have classrooms that are crumbling and equipment that's not working, and we hear stories of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of facilities in the athletic department and wonder what's going on with that disparity," van Donkelaar said. "I think the main items that people are upset about are mainly the process by which it (the baseball decision) happened and then this disparity between how the athletic department is able to run their business as opposed to the access to resources the rest of the campus has."

English professor Gordon Sayre, the Senate president, said one reason the faculty should be consulted is to ensure that the athletic department remains self-sufficient. It is one of only a few Division I sports programs in the country that generates enough revenue to cover its expenses - although a few professors question whether it is truly self-supporting - and Sayre said faculty oversight can help keep it that way.

"My concern is that they may go into debt and have to come back to the general fund of the university and ask for a bailout," he said.

"And I think that would be really horrible."