Grossman, I disagree with you here. Naturally, as an academic institution, the absolute last items to face the axe should be those directly bearing on the College’s educational mission — library, faculty, etc. Everything else is fat: we should be willing to cut it if necessary, and thankful for it when we have it. We are all in agreement with this.
However, the story here is not whether or not swimming and diving should be cut. All things being equal, that’s a debatable point, depending on your preferred method of resource allocation. The story is that swimming and diving were cut, while ridiculous expenses (like the Office of the Dean of Plurality, the Women’s Resource Center, and just about everything done in Collis) were not. That’s the outrage — not what was cut, but what they were thinking when they did the cutting. It is fully deserving of your condemnation.
This is about opportunity costs. Whatever you think of swimming and diving, you have to acknowledge that they have a better claim to College funds than the politically motivated boondoggles they chose to keep. Yes, the administration’s values are on display here, and more and more we’re looking like Swarthmore or Bryn Mawr.
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