Sports and Politics: A Lucrative Partnership

“Action expresses priorities.” 

― Mahatma Gandhi

When Detroit filed for what is the largest municipal bankruptcy in United States history last week, one of the items that immediately garnered public attention was the potential for pensions for current retirees who had worked for the city. A pension shortfall accounts for $3.5 billion of the city's $18 billion in debt, and the city's emergency manager, Kevyn Orr, has called for "significant" pension cuts.

But even with pensions possibly getting the axe, along with who knows what else in terms of services for the already downtrodden city, or even masterpieces at the Detroit Institute of Art, Detroit still seems ready to shell out more dollars then Detorit rapper Eminem has F-bombs in his music to help pay for a new arena for the National Hockey League's Detroit Red Wings. Detroit's Downtown Development Authority intends to use $284.5 million in property taxes captured within its 615-acre downtown district to pay off the bonds issued by the state to build the 18,000-seat arena.

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R), said the plan as an investment in Detroit's future, saying a new arena "should increase the tax base of the city longer term, and should increase the employment opportunities for Detroiters." But if that's what Detroit and Michigan lawmakers are banking on, they are setting themselves up to be sorely disappointed.

People are speaking up, pointing out that when the Detroit Tigers received a new stadium in 2000, the resulting boom was so good, by which of course I mean that bad, that when the City issued $80 million in 30 year bonds to pay for part of the $300 million to construct Comerica Park, they would spend the first 12 years only knocking out about $15 million of their debt. Even after a refinance job, they City is still on the hook for over $60 million dollars.

"Sports stadiums typically aren't a good tool for economic development," Victor Matheson, an economist at Holy Cross and an expert in sports economics, told Travis Waldron and me last year. As Matheson wrote in a study with economist Robert Baade, "Researchers who have gone back and looked at economic data for localities that have hosted mega-events, attracted new franchises, or built new sports facilities have almost invariably found little or no economic benefits from spectator sports." This is particularly true of a hockey arena, because it's hockey... The only thing I could picture being worse is if the city vested a quarter of a billion dollars in constructing a WWE arena.

Is there a common thread here? In fact there is, both the Tigers and the Red Wings are owned by Mike Ilitch (pictured above) who founded the Little Caesar's pizza chain and whose family have a net worth of $2.7 billion, according to Forbes. The Red Wings are the sixth most valuable NHL franchise. Yet public money is being ponied up to give them a new home. Wouldn't a person who believed in their product be willing to pony up their own capital to invest in their team(s). Being a Cubs fan, I present you with my case and point in the form of the Ricketts family, who are spending $500 million on their own money to renovate historic Wrigley field and create a new retail center in Chicago (That's not to say they didn't try to get some public money first).

This certainly isn't a problem that is unique to Detroit. The city of Glendale, Ariz., recently decided to give a huge package of subsidies to the NHL's Phoenix Coyotes, despite the fact that no one goes to see the team and the city is slashing public services.

And don't think that it is just Major League teams that have it's priorities disproportionately tied to sports. In March 2007, the Solon, IA High School Football/Track Complex committee presented the concept to their Board of Education, and the Board gave approval to initiate fund raising activities for the project, a new football and track field, complete with new locker rooms, press boxes, and a weight room. The estimated cost for this project was at about $4.5 million dollars, largely from private donations. But with over $800,000 coming from school funding. In the 2007-08 school year, massive state budget cuts hit Solon along with many other school that created projections of hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

But Detroit's decision is even more ridiculous given its pending bankruptcy. On one hand are pensioners making tens of thousands per year for their work for the city; on the other is a billionaire who owns an immensely successful restaurant franchise and two professional sports team. Thus far, the city appears to have prioritized taking care of the latter.

What Studying A College Can Teach Us

Bowdoin College, an elite university located in Maine that has an acceptance rate of only 16% of its applicants, has recently found itself the nexus of a massive influx of controversy.

…And it’s all because its president talked down the wrong person.

The pre-bought face-off came in the form of a friendly game of golf between Bowdoin's President Barry Mills and a philanthropist/investor named Thomas Klingenstein, though it is unclear precisely how heated the driver wielding dialogue got, it evidently distressed Mills enough that he delivered the first real swing when he decided to mention a particularly unpleasant golfing partner who’d interrupted his backswing to spout racist platitudes.

Shockingly, Klingenstein found this response galling. As part of his repose and counter punch, Klingenstein decided to commission researchers to do an academic report on Bowdoin’s culture, both academically and on campus, to see just what the college was teaching its students. The result was a 355 page report by the group National Association of Scholars that systematically broke down Bowdoin’s entire culture and worldview with extreme candor.

Plenty of information and insight can be gleaned from this reports, from bizarre and horribly slanted seminars to op-eds written by the school presidents suggesting how students should vote in elections. Reading through the report makes one thing pretty apparent. Academics at this school is about lecturing, not engaging.

Shock and horror about this report will be on display in the conservative circles, and plenty of dismissals will occur on the opposing side. The irony that some people will undoubtedly use this as a reason to attack their political foes is not lost on me. Also, the fact that I'm writing an opinion piece on this whole topic makes me chuckle a little. But, what is the typical person who didn't go to this school, or, such as myself, someone who went to a different school that had some, but not overwhelming biases, take from this story? My take is that discourse in school is threatened.

Society is becoming polarized, duh, so it only makes sense that some of that spill over into our education system. Perhaps that is even the source of some of our public discourse. I'm sure a great essay could be written about the man who learned everything about life from school having a conversation about the man who learned everything about life from church, perhaps another day. For now, I'm stating that the education is becoming defined as the imparting of knowledge. That sounds reasonable, right? Keep reading.

Take a moment, close your eyes, and picture the perfect college lecture setting. Is the professor behind a podium going on and on about a topic, fielding few if any questions, laughing at his own jokes about dissenters and how foolish they are? I hope not, I've had classes like that, I referred to them as snooze times. Or, do you see a professor walking out in front of their podium, asking an open-ended question, waiting for a response, then engaging and challenging a student? Playing the eternal protagonist to whatever position is brought up first, until another student assumes that role and the professor can become little more than a moderator, infusing facts into the conversation and making sure it stays on topic and civil. I've had classes like that as well, luckily I was well rested for them.

In a time where opinions are everywhere and facts fall to the wayside, the true charge of a college isn't to spill knowledge into one's brain, we have Google for that, it's not to make a student to absorb an abundance of perspective, we have Fox News and MSNBC for that. The challenge for our colleges, and our education system as a whole is to get our young people to think for themselves. The definition of education is, and should always be, learning how to learn.

Diversity Dilemma in Iowa Schools

There are few areas in Iowa where race is becoming as diverse as it is in Iowa City. Be it the attraction of the neighborhoods to a diverse graduating class from the University of Iowa, the convenience of travel from the overcrowded Chicago area, or perhaps something as simple as a City just being inviting to a broad spectrum of people. However, there is an issue bubbling under the surface as these people start to see less of a beautiful mosaic and more of clearly defined collection of bordered colors that make up the canvas of Iowa City, prompting action from the cities School Board to draft a policy that attempts to address the disparity of diversity. This policy doesn't define diversity through race. Rather its aim is to even out the number of kids based on achievement, to this end, the correlation of who receive federal assistance known as free and reduced lunch across the district was cited as a more politically correct method of trying to bridge that achievement gap. As it is right now, critics say a handful of the schools are shouldering the majority of the burden.

The community chimes in on the new policy

I start off by saying that I did not live in Iowa City during my elementary school years, though I have several friends that did and I attended Southeast Junior High and City High School, so I take an interest in the happenings of the district as a whole, but have no real 'skin in the game'. I do have some old acquaintances from the Mark Twain Elementary neighborhood where almost eighty percent of students are eligible for the federal assistance programs free lunch and reduced lunch. That makes this the school with the highest rate of kids in poverty in the Iowa City school district.

The Iowa City School District is trying to buck this trend by passing a diversity policy that takes the schools with the highest concentration of students participating in the free/reduced lunch programs and shipping them to other schools with lower participation. This seems to fly in the face of neighborhood elementary schools and creates a mess when attempting to set bus routes so that all students are safely getting to their assigned school. There is also a concern of separating students from their neighborhood peers, and immediately labeling these kids as poor in their new classrooms, concurrent with many instances of being taken from a largely minority school to a largely white school. All of which has led to a large public outcry and a loud dissent on the school board itself.

Is there a clear answer to address the issue of diversity in a school district? School board member Jeff McGinness says 'no', and that Iowa City has hidden its changing population by 'squirreling them away' in certain neighborhoods

McGinness, who voted against the diversity policy, says the school board can only do so much. In order to get at the root causes of the achievement gap in Iowa City schools the towns that make up the district needs to act, "what we need them to agree on is a housing development plan, because that’s the only way it can work. There’s got to be some balance on how we are going manage growth in our district. Without that, everything that we do, every two three years we could have to redistrict as a result."

My critical observation is this; we are talking about schools under the same leadership, in the same district, sometimes only a couple miles apart, and achievement, by whatever metrics they have established to measure that, is suffering from such a large disparity that we are prying kids out of their neighborhoods to try and correct it. This issue appears to supersede any concern about how much money we are dumping into schools, or what teachers they have, or what tests we are giving them. The case is made once again with this story that income and pedigree seem to be the best indicators for educational success.

Is there an admission in this story that poor education is contagious? Is this the hump that kids are all but doomed to fail to get over when they are born into communities that are already behind? Obviously no one wants to believe that your geographical location should be the primary indicator for if you are successful or not in life, but that is the elephant in the room that appears to be weighing us down. The question then becomes what are we going to do to fix it.

Here are some of my suggestions;

Break up low income housing, making sure to keep the net number that we need available, but have the program focus on subsidizing units rather then entire developments. This could help avoid such high concentrations of low income students. Also consider putting term limits on each unit or some form of incentive to try to encourage families to better their situation and potentially stay in the units even if a subsidy is lessened over time.

District wide talented and gifted programs. If we have the next Mozart or Einstein in the district, we need to encourage that individual, regardless of their location.

Good old fashioned involvement. I can understand and appreciate that technology makes it easier then ever to keep parents up to date on what's going on in their children's education, however, technology can be turned off. Programs that build relationships between educator and parents in person need to be encouraged and parents need to be persuaded to take an active part in a child's education. Perhaps opening a tutor shop in these neighborhoods that kids can go and work on their homework with a certified teacher ready to assist would help.

I don't feel that these neighborhoods are so far gone that we need to turn a blind eye or run away from them in fear.