UC Berkeley has pumped up to $14 million per year from its general budget into the athletics department, leading to criticism of the administration as budget cuts have affected other parts of the campus. The UC Berkeley Academic Senate — the faculty’s governing body — in 2009 approved a resolution calling for the school’s athletic department to become self-supporting. Society’s attention to athletics, Nader said, has moved people down what he called the “sensuality ladder,” a theoretical scale of people’s interactions with the world. Nader compared athletics to fast food, which “turns the tongue against the brain.” “Your education is supposed to push you up the sensuality ladder,” he said. Society’s path down the ladder is reflected in the fact that universities pay football coaches more than professors and that UC Berkeley alumni were more concerned about the elimination of the baseball team than the university’s role designing nuclear weapons, he said.

Read full article [here].
by Matt Krupnick, The San Jose Mercury News.

Posted: October 5th, 2011, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.