Well, after a couple years of discussion, the administration and the Board of Trustees has finally made a decision: they will not cut any athletic programs.

However, university officials do “anticipate a reduction of one scholarship per current sport over the next two years” according to Monday’s article in The Daily Eastern News.

It is never pleasant to cut or eliminate any aspect of university life, athletics included. There are probably many student-athletes on campus who are relieved at the fact that their sport will be kept, and that there is no longer the possibility of it being let go by the university.

It is good that the administration finally came to a decision on this, so we can now have some closure and move on to other issues.

We do, though, have some questions about the way athletics was treated compared to academics. We understand that, as Eastern President David Glassman said, it is two different issues, and it is not necessarily an “apples to apples” comparison. It is obviously a complex issue, as many have been saying for some time

But at the same time, there are some inequities between the two of them that could have been addressed.

For instance, during the vitalization project, Workgroup No.7, which looked at academic programs, named actual majors they thought should be eliminated.

Workgroup No.4, which looked at athletics, got away with just saying that “individual team sports need to be evaluated to determine elimination possibilities” in their final recommendations.

No sports being considered for elimination were named- instead, only sports NOT being considered were named.  It was in this way that athletic programs got to avoid the nervousness academic departments felt when being named as possibly being eliminated. They also avoided the consequences of being named as possibly being eliminated.

There was also a longer time period in which the fate of athletics were decided. The administration has been talking about athletics for the better part of two years, while academic programs were debated over a few months, and one was eliminated only a few months after that.

With these considerations in mind, we hope the administration keeps taking both of these aspects of university life seriously as it continues to look at the way Eastern should develop.