Re: swim team

While Dartmouth isn’t the first school to cut a swim team nor will it be the last, it is troubling nonetheless. It’s one thing when a school like Nebraska cuts men’s Swimming and Diving because of budget troubles (Nebraska’s athletic department is self-sufficient, funded mainly through football money while receiving no taxpayer money or general university funds) and Title IX issues (they kept the women’s team), it is another entirely when a school like Dartmouth, with an athletic department which is funded by the school and doesn’t depend on ticket revenue to support its teams, must cut its swim team anyway.

Swimming and diving, while not high profile sports, are at least well-known Olympics sports which the USA used to dominate. As the number of NCAA swim teams diminish, though, that will change, as we saw in Sydney when Australia started to challenge the US for supremacy in the water.

Frankly, I must question why swimming and diving get cut but not the obviously more cost-intensive and yet more obscure sports of sailing or equestrian. Or why an athletic department that can squeeze 34 varsity sports out of a budget of $10.8M is being forced to cut sports at all. That is a bargain price, and provides much better use of student and endowment funds than any Collis event or a Dean of Plurality. For comparison, consider again a place like Nebraska, which offers 19 sports with an athletic budget of around $55M. Granted that includes scholarship costs which Dartmouth does not have, but the point is the same. It would seem like they could dig up the $250k necessary to save the team if they really wanted to.