Student Association President Aysha Seedat met with Director of Athletics Mark Coyle and Deputy Athletics Director Kimberly Keenan-Kirkpatrick prior to Thanksgiving Break to discuss ways to increase student attendance at sporting events.

In particular, the officials discussed SA’s proposals for a student athletic fee, a spirit program and an expanded student section at men’s basketball and football games. No final decisions were made, but Seedat said she will be meeting with Coyle and Keenan-Kirkpatrick again before the end of the semester.

In February, then-SA President Boris Gresely wrote a proposal that included expanding the student section at the Carrier Dome for football and men’s basketball games. But that proposal was pulled as SU searched for a new director of athletics following Daryl Gross’s resignation in March. SU hired Coyle in June, and Seedat has since picked up where Gresely left off.

The proposal argues that the Carrier Dome should have a student section at football games and select basketball games that accommodates seating for all full-time undergraduate students. Last year, that amounted to 14,532 students.

When Seedat pitched the idea to Coyle, he said it was something SU could “definitely” do for football games, since the Dome has a larger capacity for those games than it does for basketball games, Seedat said.

For basketball games, Seedat said she hopes to move the student section from behind the basket to along the sideline. But she said it might be difficult to secure enough seating for all students. The proposal says the section should be expanded when SU plays teams ranked in the Associated Press Top 25 poll, though it doesn’t address how exactly that would work.

“It’s things like that that we have to iron out,” Seedat said. “But (Coyle) is definitely willing to work with us.”

To ensure enough students could have access to football and men’s basketball season tickets, Seedat, Coyle and Keenan-Kirkpatrick discussed whether they might implement a student athletic fee. The proposal calls for an automatic $100 fee, which would replace the way students buy those tickets. Currently, students must pay $219 to the Carrier Dome Box Office for a combination of football and men’s basketball season tickets.

Seedat said students would be able to opt out of the fee, and added that she would want the athletics department to be “transparent” about where the money received from the fee will go.

“If we’re going to charge students $100 … I want it to go back toward the students,” Seedat said. “I don’t want it to go to anyone’s salary.”

Seedat said Coyle was receptive to the possibility of a spirit program, which would be a point system in which students would receive points for going to games of less-attended sports, such as field hockey, women’s soccer and volleyball. To incentivize attendance at those sports, students with more points would have access to better seats at men’s basketball and football games.

Seedat has been conducting research throughout this semester on other schools in the Atlantic Coast Conference that have athletic fees and/or spirit programs.  She sent that research to Coyle and Keenan-Kirkpatrick, who plan to review it before they meet again with Seedat sometime in December.

Published on November 29, 2015 at 10:50 pm

Contact Michael: mdburk01@syr.edu