Perhaps We Should Be Calling Icing

Word is that the Big Ten brand is coming to hockey. To form the Big Ten college hockey conference, the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, and Ohio State University will be leaving the Central Collegiate Hockey Association, which is one of the top Division I college hockey conferences, while the University of Minnesota and the University of Wisconsin will be leaving the Western Collegiate Hockey Association, which is another top Division I college hockey conference. The Big Ten conference mandates, though, that six conference schools need to participate in an intercollegiate sport in order for the conference to hold a championship. So, that means that these programs need one more member …

Enter Pennsylvania State University, which announced this past fall that it would be adding Division I men’s and women’s hockey programs, both of which have been operating on the club level. The university’s ability to take this step has been subsidized largely by the largest gift in the university’s history: an $88 million donation by Terrence M. and Kim Pegula that will help fund the teams and the construction of a new ice arena for the teams.

This all is occurring at the same time that the Pennsylvania State University system is looking at a budget cut of $182 million dollars, as Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett has proposed what the university has called a “devastating” 52.4% drop in its state funding.

The politics of universities being what they are, these are, of course, two separate financial entities. If someone donates money to a university and earmarks that money for a particular purpose, then it must go toward that purpose. There are good reasons for this, as it allows individuals who feel strongly about particular programs at a university to direct their money toward those programs, rather than having the money go into the university’s general pot from which all programs draw and which might leave the programs the person wants to fund with little or none of that donation. We must ask, though, the question of priorities. When universities are facing immense budget crises, which will inevitably lead to cuts in instruction, student support, and many other programs that help universities serve their fundamental missions as educational and research facilities, how is it that folks can feel so strongly that it’s actually the development of hockey teams that warrants the largest donation in a university’s history?