Every few years, campus administrators inevitably ask students to raise their own fees to pay for services that the university should have already been providing in the first place.

For example, students will soon pay for an expanded Price Center (so the chancellor and her staff can move into the current one). And they must subsidize athletic facilities, even though, until last year, students had no say over their operations — a direct violation of the requirements of university policy.

Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Joseph W. Watson’s proposed athletics referendum — to bail out an indebted department that oversees the school’s NCAA teams — is cut from the same cloth: It asks students to pay the cost for the poor decisions made by administrators who have failed to keep athletics out of the red, while at the same time refusing to cede any authority to them or institute safeguards against the necessity of a similar bailout in the future.

Recently, Watson has suggested that the future of UCSD sports is in the hands of students. However, the truth is that whether students fork over an extra $300,000 a year will depend on decisions to be made by Watson.

The Case for a ‘No’ Vote

In recent years, students twice voted to reject higher fees, first to pay for student-initiated outreach, and then, last month, to increase funding for A.S. programming. Unlike athletics, which, quite honestly, most care little about, the two failed referenda dealt with issues near and dear to student hearts.

If students have money with which they are willing to part, the A.S. Council can surely find a more important use for it than athletics. Nor is the situation as dire for the athletics department as Watson suggests.

For example, the department had previously mulled expanding beer gardens at various home games — a proposal that would surely bring in some badly needed cash and actually increase attendance. However, the idea has been nixed by Watson, who has continued to resist alcohol at campus events. As a result, he now wants students to bear the cost for this philosophical intractability.

Similarly, the bitter reality is that if athletics are truly a priority that students are willing to pay for, the department could simply charge them a fee for attending games, a funding model used by many other major universities.

Issue of Control

Assuming that an athletics referendum does make it to next year’s ballot, what would an acceptable version look like? In our view, if administrators want students to shoulder the responsibilities for financing sports, they must also allow them to have some of the privileges.

These privileges should come in the form of a new board — on which students would have a majority — to oversee the athletics department, preferably with authority to hire and fire its director. A similar model (sans firing authority) is currently used for most projects funded by the students, including University Centers and the athletic facilities.

Under such a system, if budget deficits were to continue, at least students could take comfort in knowing that they had a say in the process, and that they themselves — not just university staff members, with no input from or accountability to students — were at fault. Even better, there would be actual student representatives who could be held accountable by students for the mismanagement.

Granted, the creation of such a board will not ensure the passage of the athletics referendum. However, without it, students should surely reject it.

Until he decides to offer students a seat at the table, the future of UCSD athletics remains in Watson’s hands.