The Rocket

Issue date: 2/17/06 Section: News

Media Credit: Karen Butler Senior community health major Elise Ford and sophomore health and physical education major Lara Winter discuss the athletic cuts at the CAS open forum yesterday. Ford and Winter represented only two of the 122 student-athletes who were affected by the cuts. One other student-athlete and two other students were also in attendance.

Only three student-athletes of the 122 that were affected by the recent athletic cuts attended the Commonwealth Association of Students (CAS) meeting that intended to unify the athletes.

The meeting was an open forum for student-athletes, coaches, and the general public to come in and express their opinions about the sports teams getting cut.

Mike Cornetti, senior secondary education social studies major and CAS president said he tried to spread the news of the meeting through flyers, advertisements and emails, but all the publicity didn't work.

"I'm extremely disappointed that people didn't show up to the meeting," Cornetti said. "These cuts are detrimental to every student's welfare and especially to the athletes whose sports were cut. We, as students, have the power and choice to do something about this."

Is the small turnout due to student apathy about the sports being cut, or people not being familiar with the CAS program?

With only three athletes showing up, and two other students coming in during the middle of the meeting, Cornetti said having only a few number of people rallying will not solve anything.

"Going into the meeting, I thought if we could get 20 to 25 people there we could set up a meeting with (SRU President Robert) Smith and ask him about these unanswered questions that so many of us have about the athletic cuts," Cornetti said.

Cornetti said he thought the cuts are not fair to the students and will hurt SRU in the years to come in such areas of tuition and alumni donations for other sports.

"To cut eight teams to save $350,000 is not proficient," Cornetti said. "Slippery Rock is known for its athletics and for its physical education major program and these cuts are hurting both."

Lara Winter, sophomore health and physical education major, and Elise Ford, senior community health major, said they are willing to fight for field hockey and will try their best to encourage others for their cause.

"It's still upsetting to me," Winter said. "These cuts will make Slippery Rock look bad in the big picture of things, and to me it still doesn't make sense."

Ford agreed.

"Even though I'm a senior, these cuts still hurt me because I have friends that are still in field hockey and this sport was my identity at this college," Ford said. "The past weeks have been stressful, but cutting these sports is still not right."

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