I’m on the student senate at one of the CT community colleges (don’t wanna dox myself and say which one). For the last month or so we’ve been debating whether or not to fork over $11,000 of our student activities budget to pay for insurance so we can start a basketball and soccer intramural league for the students. We were going to do flag football too but it would have been too expensive.

There’s a massive demand for sports with the students that have been polled, and the coordinator has referenced some data that athletics programs can be huge for retention. Remember, we’re talking about community college where keeping kids showing up is a massive deal. One completed semester can give someone who thought they had no shot at college the confidence to get their degree.

The money we’re thinking of allocating would represent about 20% of our semester budget. This budget is the money that pays for all student activities, every single club or event is funded by this money. Hopefully the fact that we’re about to use 20% of that money just to cover 11k, which would be pennies for most schools, so we can have something as fundamental to a school like UConn as an extremely modest athletics program (kids wearing reversible jerseys twice a week and playing in the high school gym down the street) can give some perspective at the gap in funding here.

Just today the faculty advisers were lamenting that class sizes are being raised from 25 to 30 students in the fall, and that classes will be canceled more quickly if not enough students have enrolled before the semester.

Honestly the complaints you’re saying UConn is making sound painfully tone deaf. I graduate this semester and have applied to UConn, so maybe if I go there I’ll start to understand why their president needs two mansions. But for now, yeah seems kinda shitty.