Dartmouth cuts worry Ivy community

With Dartmouth announcing its Nov. 25 decision to eliminate the swimming and diving programs next year, teams across the Ivy League are asking, "Are we next?"

"It's a bad precedent for the Ivy League," Penn men's and women's swimming coach Mike Schnur said. "It's a bad precedent for our sport."

Dartmouth -- whose men's team was established in 1921 -- is one of the original members of the Eastern Intercollegiate Swimming League.

"[I felt] shock -- that an Ivy program would cut both programs," Harvard women's swimming coach Stephanie Wriede Morawski said. "We have a tradition and some of our programs have been around for years."

"Club sport or whatnot, it would be a disgrace to the Ivy League if they were cut."

Dartmouth informed the college community of its decision through a press release issued on Monday, Nov. 25 at 10 a.m. -- one hour after a scheduled meeting with the swim team.

Like the rest of the Dartmouth students, members of the school's Student-Athlete Advisory Committee also learned of the decision through the press release.

"We all felt a little shocked because we're supposed to be the liaison between the sports and the athletic department," Dartmouth SAAC representative Andrew Goodman said.

Dartmouth established its SAAC in September -- it is an NCAA regulation that all schools have a SAAC.

Senior men's swim captain Louis Fidel also wonders about the legitimacy of the SAAC if the athletic department does not communicate its plans under such dire circumstances.

"I'm curious what it's there for if it's not there to advise about student athletes," Fidel said.

The Dartmouth administration did not reply to repeated phone calls during the past two days.

Fidel and the other swim captains met with Dartmouth President James Wright on Friday while almost 700 students staged a 'stand-in' at Parkhurst Hall, protesting the school's decision to cut swimming.

"The goal was more for the president to comfort us," Fidel said of Wright's agenda during Friday's meeting. "It was more to say, 'We feel your pain.'"

On Monday afternoon, Fidel and women's captain Mia Yocco again met with the Dartmouth administration but this time, to discuss legitimate options for how to fund the team.

Although the swim captains were present and answered questions, Vice President for Student Life Amit Anand and Student Body Vice President Julia Hildreth largely presided at the meeting, showing a PowerPoint presentation to Dean James Larimore, Provost Barry Scherr and Provost Budget Officer Adam Keller.

After emotional first reactions from both the swim teams and student body -- approximately 300 people marched to the president's house on Nov. 25 in addition to the previous Friday's 'stand-in' at Parkhurst Hall -- the meeting sought to ground the arguments with future options.

"What we wanted to say was that in addition to that, there is an intellectual response and a response based on principles," Anand said.

"This has become so much bigger than the swim team that it is no longer a special interest group."

The Dartmouth administration has claimed that it does not cater specifically to special interest groups, so members of the student assembly polled the entire undergraduate community through the campus e-mail service -- the Blitz -- about their opinions on eliminating the swim program.

Two-thirds of those polled responded to the e-mail, with 81.2-percent voting for the reinstatement of the team -- Anand claims that this implies that the decision is a college-wide issue.

Anand and Hildreth also addressed possible budget initiatives that would permit the team to stay afloat. Citing examples such as the endowed Princeton wrestling team, which also faced the possibility of being cut in 1993, and the endowed Cornell swimming coaches' positions, the student representatives sought to show precedents of funding a team from outside sources.

The student government representatives also suggested the possibilities of amending the capital campaign, and setting "apart part of the cost savings from the college's plan to refinance debt with lower rates to offset some of the budget cuts."

The captains and student assembly representatives will next meet on Jan. 9, this time with Class of 1954 Dartmouth alumnus Steve Muller and swimming parent Dean Allen who will present more options to the administration.

The Dartmouth Athletic Department learned in August that it would need to eliminate $260,000 from its annual operating budget of $10.8 million.

Though unsure whether it would make a vertical cut during initial discussions, the administration considered specifically dropping swimming as opposed to other any other sport because it considers Karl Michael Pool to be an inadequate facility. A new 50-meter pool would cost as much as $20-$25 million to construct, according to the Dartmouth press release.

"That is the standard in Division I athletics today," Deputy Athletic Director Bob Ceplikas said of the need for a 50-meter facility.

Karl Michael Pool opened in 1963 and features 10 25-yard lanes, with the two final lanes having the capacity to extend to 50-meters.

Currently, only Harvard and Princeton have facilities which are adequate to hold Ivy League championship meets. Therefore, the Ivy League swimming community questions why the Dartmouth administration is concerned enough with the pool to cut the program.

"That's just an excuse," Morawski said. "It's a coverup for the fact that they were looking to cut."

Penn women's swimming captain Jessica Anders acknowledges that were the proclaimed 50-meter pool to be the measure of a standard Ivy League facility, Penn's Sheerr Pool would also be deemed insufficient.

"It's an absolute fallacy," Schnur said. "Using the fact that they don't have a good facility is an absolute joke. It's a little weird-looking, but it's a good pool."

The Dartmouth swimming teams set off to St. Lucia and Hawaii today on what could potentially be their last training trips in school history.

With winter vacation and many students leaving to go abroad in the coming semester because of Dartmouth's obligatory off-campus 'D semester,' many members of the team worry that the push to re-establish Dartmouth swimming will lose momentum.

Now that the administration is listening to viable options, however, swimmers and their parents will look to outside resources for viable business initiatives that will fund the team.

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