Calling all Alumni and Cal Women’s Rugby Supporters!
As most of you know, the Cal Men’s Varsity Rugby team has been demoted to “Varsity Club” ending the team as we know it. One of the excuses to cut the team used by the current Cal Athletic Director Sandy Barbour, is to keep in compliance with Title IX. Part of the men’s team’s response has been to propose a women’s varsity rugby team in order to keep their own. This was rejected by the university. As most of you also may know, this was not the first time the University has rejected elevating the Cal Women’s Rugby team to varsity status.
The men’s alumni are organizing to reverse the University’s decision. They are planning to stage a show of support at the football game this weekend. They will be handing out fliers and a plane with a banner will be flying over the campus at 11:30. With rugby in the spotlight, we now have a chance to bring attention to the women’s team as well and gain Varsity Status for them!
This Saturday, October 9, 2010, we are planning on meeting at 10:30 am at Strawberry Field before the football game to plan a course of action and support our team. If you are in the area, we would love to gather as many alumnae as possible and keep the momentum going! Please wear Cal Women’s Rugby shirts if you have them. We are looking to see if the woman’s team has shirts for sale for those attending the game to wear in unity.
If you can not attend this Saturday there are still things you can do to help:
1. Go to the Elevate Cal Women’s Rugby to Varsity Facebook fan page and show your support by clicking on the ‘like’ button.
2. Go to the Save Cal Rugby Facebook fan page and show your support by clicking on the ‘like’ button.
3. Go to the Cal Women’s Rugby Facebook fan page and show your support by clicking on the ‘like’ button.
4. Email Chancellor Birgeneau (chancellor@berkeley.edu), Vice Chancellor Yeary (frankyeary@berkeley.edu) and Athletic Director Barbour (asb@berkeley.edu) expressing your support for both Cal Rugby teams, covering the following points:
You support elevating the existing Cal Women’s Rugby team to Varsity Status.
The Cal Women’s Rugby team is a model sports club on and off the pitch, having been named Most Organized Sports Club or Outstanding Sports Club twice each since the team was re-founded in 1998. The team’s on-field successes include having gone to regional playoffs every year for the last 6 years and to Nationals (Round of 16) four times in the past nine years.
You urge the University to make good on the promise its Gender Equity and Diversity Subcommittee made to the Cal Women’s Rugby team in 2007 to support the team’s change to varsity status.
You will not make any academic or athletics donations to Cal until they overturn the decision to demote the Cal Men’s Rugby team. Demoting Cal Rugby does not save the athletic department any money. The team is self funded and contributed over $300k to the general fund last year.
On the Horizon:
Katie Wharton and Sarah Wallace have volunteered to start a website to help organize the elevation of Women’s Rugby to Varsity status. More details to come!
We need alumnae to help organize, to write letters to the editors of various publications that are reporting on this issue, and to monitor and comment on blogs discussing the University’s decision.
We look forward to hearing from you all!
Go Bears!
Sarah Wallace ’01
Emily Nugent ’99
Katie Wharton ’00
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UC Berkeley’s recent elimination of popular sports programs highlighted endemic problems in the university’s management. Chancellor Robert Birgeneau’s eight-year fiscal track record is dismal indeed. He would like to blame the politicians in Sacramento, since they stopped giving him every dollar he has asked for, and the state legislators do share some responsibility for the financial crisis. But not in the sense he means.
A competent chancellor would have been on top of identifying inefficiencies in the system and then crafting a plan to fix them. Compentent oversight by the Board of Regents and the legislature would have required him to provide data on problems and on what steps he was taking to solve them. Instead, every year Birgeneau would request a budget increase, the regents would agree to it, and the legislature would provide. The hard questions were avoided by all concerned, and the problems just piled up….until there was no money left.
It’s not that Birgeneau was unaware that there were, in fact, waste and inefficiencies in the system. Faculty and staff have raised issues with senior management, but when they failed to see relevant action taken, they stopped. Finally, Birgeneau engaged some expensive ($3 million) consultants, Bain & Company, to tell him what he should have been able to find out from the bright, engaged people in his own organization.
From time to time, a whistleblower would bring some glaring problem to light, but the chancellor’s response was to dig in and defend rather than listen and act. Since UC has been exempted from most whistleblower lawsuits, there are ultimately no negative consequences for maintaining inefficiencies.
In short, there is plenty of blame to go around. But you never want a serious crisis to go to waste. An opportunity now exists for the UC president, Board of Regents, and California legislators to jolt UC Berkeley back to life, applying some simple check-and-balance management principles. Increasing the budget is not enough; transforming senior management is necessary. The faculty, students, staff, academic senate, Cal. alumni, and taxpayers await the transformation.