By Sonia Lemus and Dylan Bryant
Runner Staff
Questions were brought up at the March 6 Budget Forum regarding what percentage of CSU Bakersfield’s budget goes towards athletics and if that percentage is significantly higher in comparison to other CSU’s.
In 2005, CSUB students passed a referendum that gave funding for the Student Recreation Center, the Antelope Valley Campus student activity project, clubs and organizations, and financial support for CSUB to move up to Division I.
According to Senior Athletics Associate Director Cindy Goodmon, most of the funding from that student referendum goes towards scholarships for student athletes.
Associated Students Inc. Director of Budget Management Selina Galvan stated in an email that ASI gave $2,381,775 from their yearly budget to the Division I scholarship, and another $420,274 from the campus programing and spirit fee.
Isabel Gonzlaez, budget coordinator said that athletics gets another $63 per student from students’ instructionally related activities fee.
Goodmon says that the fees from the referendum were to “financially assist with expenditures associated with moving from Division II to Division I.”
Goodmon explained that scholarships are higher within Division I programs.
Student athletes get different types of scholarships based on the sport they play and the requirements that the National Collegiate Athletic Association has for that sport.
The two types of scholarships CSUB athletes get are equivalencybased scholarships and headcount scholarships.
All of the sports at CSUB, aside from volleyball and basketball, provide equivalency-based scholarships. The NCAA allows up to 9.9 scholarships per team in this case. These scholarships are usually distributed amongst the players; one student may have a full ride scholarship while another may have 25 percent of a scholarship.
Basketball and volleyball have headcount scholarships which are almost all full ride or close to full ride scholarships.
While there was a minimal fee in transferring to Division I, none of the student fee referendum money was used for that purpose.
Money for the CSUB budget mostly comes from government aid, donations, and student fees. The money from student fees has a specific purpose and students often decide where they want that money to go by voting in student fee referendums. This money cannot be used for other purposes. However, government aid can be changed from one department to another based upon need.
Management and Marketing Associate Professor John Tarjan stated during the March 6 Budget Forum ten percent of the universities budget goes to athletics. He arrived at this figure through the following math:
The public report filed by CSUB to the NCAA in 2016 showed that the athletics department received 3.42 million dollars in student fees, and 6.69 million dollars in school funds, totalling roughly 10.1 million dollars that comes from the university. The university budget is about 101 million dollars a year.
However, Athletics Director Kenneth “Ziggy” Siegfried says that is not the case.
“Athletics right now gets approximately six percent of the budget,” Siegfried says.
Goodmon said that six percent totaled about five million which is for salaries and fringe benefits. Government aid cannot be used for scholarships.
Goodman also pointed out that because we are a smaller school with a Division 1 program, we are going to spend a larger percentage of the budget on athletics than a larger school would.
“Because we have less students on campus we have 10 thousand students, a third of what some campuses have, our percentage is going to be larger than other institutions,” said Goodmon.
The money that comes into athletics also helps student athletes’ academic success.
“Our student athletes have seen unbelievable success in the classroom. We are now above a 3.0 [GPA] for six straight semesters,” said Siegfried.
Athletics also gets much of its funding from donors.
“We got a six-figure donation from Kern Schools for our phase two of the Kegley Center,” said Siegfried.
Goodmon added that Kern Schools also gave the donation to replace the floor in the Icardo Center and build a new blue court.
Another donor recently gave funding for the softball dugouts.
Psychology major Francisco Rodriguez thinks it is good that athletics gets support.
“It is very important that athletics is getting support because they do represent the school,” said Rodriguez.
Siegfried believes all of the departments should work together to get more funding from the state rather than fighting each other for funding.
