UNH's Million Dollar Scoreboard

As an alumna of the University of New Hampshire, as a scholar of sports, as an educator and advocate for education, I am disappointed in the university's choice to spend $1 million of a $4 million donation to a scoreboard for the new football stadium.

The gift is from the estate of Robert Morin, an alum and employee of the school who spent his 50-year career as a library cataloger. People were shocked that Morin had accumulated such an amount throughout his life and then that he left it all to the university. It gave many of us those warm, fuzzy feelings about our alma mater or respective alma maters.

Morin only restricted $100,000 of the donation--earmarked for the library--so UNH technically did not violate any restrictions on the money, though many, myself included, believe they violated the spirit of the donation. Another million lost in the football arms race. Wasted by an institution trying to be something it is not--a big-time football school.

I have complicated feelings about the morality of football, especially college football, in an era of academic and recruiting scandals and a moment when we must acknowledge the trauma of the sport, and the disproportionate effect of that trauma on poor men and black and brown men. But I am not inherently opposed to some of the money going to the football program. I am opposed to it going to a scoreboard which, in the age of planned obsolescence, will be out of date in 5? 10? years. Use it to endow a scholarship for a player who wants to go grad school maybe. For tutoring or other academic enrichment opportunities if you want to use the money in athletics. Pay it forward; make it meaningful.

In addition to the fact that this spending seems neither fiscally nor morally responsible, it may have Title IX repercussions. I have not seen the scoreboard nor have I seen the athletic department's budget this year, so I cannot say for sure, but if that scoreboard can only be used for football, it is benefiting only male athletes. Even if it can be used for other sports, it still likely benefits more men than women. So I am wondering if the university has earmarked $1 million that will go towards increasing the quality of the experience of 120ish female student athletes. New turf for the field hockey team? Chartered flights for the soccer team?

Yes, because Morin did not earmark most of the money, the university could spend it in athletics. But spending money in athletics comes with its own set of rules--including compliance with a federal law.