by Lindsay Sanneman

As I stand in the corner of the DuPont Gymnasium preparing for my daily gymnastics workout, I look around.  One of the balance beams is off kilter with a “Do Not Use” sign posted on the side, the roof leaks a little bit, and the spotting ropes over the trampoline are frayed.  I have no reason to believe these things have ever been any different (though I’m sure there would have been a greater sense of urgency to fix the broken equipment in the past), but there is one striking difference between what I see now and what I would have seen in the gym three years ago:  Instead of fifteen gymnasts preparing to work out, there are three.  Instead of three coaches monitoring the gymnasts’ warm-ups, there is one alumni supervisor.  What happened?

On April 10, 2009, the MIT Department of Athletics announced cuts in spending within the department[1].  Among other things, these cuts included the loss of eight varsity sports: pistol, alpine skiing, men’s and women’s ice hockey, golf, wrestling, and men’s and women’s gymnastics.  Though I was not yet at MIT, these cuts had a large impact on my college decision-making process.  Of my top two choices for schools, Caltech and MIT, only MIT had a gymnastics program, and I was not really ready to give up the sport I had been doing for fifteen years when I went to college.

On April 22, 2009, I remember learning the news while sitting in my high school Spanish class and sneakily reading the MIT blogs from my phone.  As I was reading one of Michael Snively’s blog posts entitled “Mind Dump (Episode 4),” I came across a sentence that made my heart drop: “It was announced this morning that 8 varsity sports were being cut from MIT’s athletics program due to budget constraints, one of them being my sport, pistol.”[2]

I remember thinking, Shoot!  Eight sports out of forty-one total.  What are my chances?  A little less than 80%…?  My chances were not quite good enough.  With a little investigation I learned that gymnastics was one of the cut sports.  After about a year of considering MIT as a college option, corresponding with the gymnastics coach, researching the school and getting really excited about the prospect of being on the team, I was suddenly in a state of shock.  I did not quite know what to think or what I should do next.  MIT was my top choice of all the colleges I had looked at, but without a gymnastics team it would probably drop below Caltech and ASU (places that were closer to home and generally had warmer climates).

Though all those affected by the cuts were deeply saddened by the decision, there was still a great sense of hope.  I learned from various articles I read at the time that the wrestling team was hoping to regain varsity status by raising money from alumni donations.  The athletic department had made it clear that the cuts were due to the financial crisis and the department’s annual deficit[3], so when the wrestling team raised $1.6 million and was refused reinstatement[4], many questions came up about the true reasons for the cuts.  Over the past two years, as a member of the gymnastics team, I have felt partially responsible for finding out more about why these programs were cut and if they really had been cut for the reasons presented by the athletics department.

Naturally, the first place I felt comfortable going for information was my teammates.  A number of them had been at MIT when the cuts happened, so I figured they would know a little more than I did about the situation.  One day when we were all stretching at the end of practice, I brought the topic up to see what kind of response I would get.  The overall feeling I got from my teammates was that they were just as baffled as I was.  They all knew about the wrestling team’s situation and were pretty convinced that the issue was not entirely financial, but beyond that, they could not provide any specific suspected reasons for the cuts.  One teammate said, “We don’t really know the whole reason.  We’d love it if you figured it out.  You’ll have to report back what you find out.”  They recommended talking to the athletic director to find out more, but I had some other plans before addressing her directly.

My next step was to go to my good friend who was a team captain of one of the eliminated teams at the time the cuts were made[5].  He had been through meetings with the athletic department and with his teammates about the future of the team as a non-varsity sport, and I figured that because he was very involved in the varsity-to-club transition process he might have an idea about why cuts had been made.  During our discussions, I learned from him that students were not informed of the cuts until it was too late to do anything about them.  Apparently (and understandably) this caused a great amount of anger from the students involved in all aspects of MIT athletics.  Another interesting point he brought up (although neither he nor I could find hard evidence to back up this idea) was that it was possible that the athletic director at the time wanted to be known for strengthening the football team while at MIT.  In order to protect the football team during the economic downturn, other sports that were not performing at the desired level as determined by the department would have to be cut.

This idea made me wonder what “performing at the desired level” meant to the athletics department.  How was that judgment made?  With a little more research online I came across something called the “Health and Vitality Process” used by MIT’s department of athletics to determine the health of each of the varsity sports.  In a paper entitled “DAPER – Varsity Sport Reduction Process Recommendation” published by the athletics department, I discovered that this process of ranking sports had been in use well before the 2009 economic downturn (as early as 2003) and that sports were already ranked based on that method[6].  This paper argued that the process provided a good method for deciding which sports to cut.  Criteria considered in this process included “Five Points of Emphasis”: student interest, management impact issues, expenses, Title IX (a law stating that women and men must have equal opportunities in universities and often applied to college athletics), and coaching/ program leadership.  After reading about this, I wondered how each of these criteria was weighted in the overall ranking of sports and which criteria in particular caused the loss of gymnastics.  I decided that those were questions for the athletic director, but before talking to her, I wanted to get the opinion of someone else involved in this controversial issue.

My next course of action was to send an email to the wrestling coach asking him about his understanding of the reasons for the cuts and about the team’s inability to regain varsity status.  I got an interesting response.  Addressing my question about the reasons for the cuts, he said,

The only reason that was given was that DAPER had an annual deficit of approximately $400,000 annually.  The AD stated at the public forum meetings that the main reason was financial.  Students asked if there were other reasons and she said no[7].

He went on to describe the team’s attempted reinstatement,

There never was any official agreement, it was verbal between me, her and the head of our alumni… they raised the amount from $1000000 to $1500000 and then to $1670000.  We had an alumni that would cover each of them.  Finally it came down from the Chancellor that it did not matter financially, he stated that the program was not viable and not enough student interest.

Clearly either the athletic department was under the illusion that the situation was entirely economic or they were lying about it.  I decided that next I should try to resolve this issue by going directly to the athletic director herself.

After setting up a meeting with the athletic director via email, I was anxious to find out what she had to say.  I was a little nervous about asking her about the cuts, but I realized that she was the only person I knew of who could provide the perspective of someone directly involved in the decision-making process.  Before gymnastics practice one day, I walked up the stairs of the Johnson Athletic Center to the administrative offices where she worked and waited outside her office.  Shortly after I arrived, she came out to greet me and introduce herself and then she began to lead me into the room.  As I entered her office, she seemed nice enough, though I had heard plenty of people speak negatively of her during my time at MIT.  Her office was certainly pleasant with comfortable chairs, a great view of main campus, and a calendar of various MIT athletic teams hanging up on the wall.  She was very accommodating and willing to answer my questions.  Based on what I had heard about her and the controversial topic I was asking about, I expected her to be a little defensive when we first met, but her professional attitude made asking the questions easier.  My first question involved the “Health and Vitality Process” and how it worked in the context of decision-making for the cuts.  She explained that the process had been around for some time before the cuts were made and was responsible for many good things that happened for MIT athletics including the 5-7 P.M. sports time, a time allotted for sports during which no classes could be scheduled.  She went on to tell me that when the department was told they had to make cuts, they consulted the results of the Health and Vitality Process from previous years to decide which sports to cut.  “It was clear from the results which eight sports should be cut,” she explained.  I went on to question her a little more about the most important criteria in deciding which sports to cut and specifically about the criteria that caused gymnastics to lose its varsity status.  “The two major things we looked at with gymnastics were availability of competition within a reasonable distance and roster size.”  She explained that the men’s gymnastics team had hardly any local schools to compete against because the national NCAA program for men’s gymnastics was so small (the national program only includes eighteen teams combined in Division I, II, and III athletics).

This point seemed to lead her to a thought about roster size. She told me, “We haven’t seen a significant decrease in roster size over the years, but the size of the gymnastics team is small compared to other teams on campus.”  I guessed from this comment that the roster size factored into the “student interest” aspect of the Health and Vitality Report, and I felt that considering such a criteria for gymnastics was a little unfair.  Gymnastics is a small sport across the nation, so many NCAA teams have a smaller roster size than a football team or a basketball team, for example.  However, she went on to tell me that it seemed that gymnastics was on the decline nationally because of the small roster sizes not only in colleges but also in high schools across the country[8].  If this was an indication that gymnastics was on the decline, then teams would supposedly begin to disappear from schools, and the availability of competition would decrease as teams disappeared.  This would mean that our team would have to travel farther and spend more money per gymnast in order to compete with a normal season.

At that point in our conversation it seemed to me that there were some non-financial reasons for cutting the teams but that they were mostly all linked to financial reasons in the end.  To get more clarification on the matter, I decided to ask about the possibility of reinstatement for teams that raise enough money.  I had the wrestling team’s situation in mind when asking the question, but I did not bring the matter up directly.  When I questioned the athletic director about whether it was possible, she replied, “Certainly! But it’s expensive.”  She explained that gymnastics, for example, would require a $3 million endowment in order to be reinstated and went on to explain exactly where the money would go in gymnastics’ case (coaches, equipment, attire, etc.).  She said that the department did not want to accept smaller, short-term donations that would only support a particular team for a few years.  If they allowed teams that accepted small donations to continue as varsity sports under the condition that they would have to raise more money in a few years in order to sustain the program, the athletic department would have to go through the process of considering eliminating the sports all over again.  “It’s not fair to the coaches who have to recruit athletes during that time.  It would be hard for them to recruit athletes if they had the possibility of losing their teams hanging over their heads,” she explained.

Hearing that reinstatement was possible but expensive made me wonder why the wrestling team was not re-granted varsity status after acquiring the necessary amount of money.  According to what I had learned from the wrestling coach, it seemed that the wrestling team had done everything necessary to regain varsity status in accordance with what the athletic department said was required.  Because of the wrestling coach’s comment about viability of the team being the main issue in the end, I went on to inquire whether concerns other than financial ones could possibly prevent a team from being reinstated even if they had the money.  I asked if issues such as availability of competition and roster size would prevent the gymnastics team from regaining varsity status even if the team was able to raise enough money.  The athletic director reiterated that a team could be reinstated with a large enough endowment, and she did not indicate that any non-financial issue would remain a problem[9].  Happy to have some information to work with, but a little flustered that what the athletic director told me did not match up with what the wrestling coach said, I thanked her for her time and went to the gym for practice.

When I reported the information I had received from the athletic director to my teammates that day, I finally got a promising response from one of our alumni.  This particular alumnus was very invested in the team during her time at MIT and continues to help out by coming in to the gym to coach a few days per week (the day I talked to her was one of the days she was coaching in the gym).  Her attire that day represented her usual appearance well: she wore athletic pants with colorful knee socks and a witty t-shirt.  She had married another MIT alum a couple months earlier and also sported a wedding ring that her husband had made for her in the machine shop.  Both of them were mechanical engineers and gymnasts and had no place they would rather be than the shop (except maybe the gym).  During this coach’s time on the varsity team, she won a few national titles and was an academic All-American.  Last year she even competed for our team at nationals and helped lead us to a national championship.  Because of her heavy involvement with MIT gymnastics over the years, she was very passionate about the cuts.  She is the type of person who is not afraid to share everything on her mind, so she was an ideal candidate to tell me what she thought about my encounter with the athletic director.  When I told her what the athletic director had told me about the reasons for the cuts, she seemed angry at first and explained that she felt like the athletic department did not really understand gymnastics completely and had made the cuts based on wrong information.  After a while she said something that caught my attention: “Well, the men’s team was going to be cut for sure, and because of Title IX[10], they had to cut the women’s team too.”

I remembered reading that all cuts would be made according to Title IX in “DAPER – Varsity Sport Reduction Process Recommendation” and that the athletic director had mentioned the men’s team’s struggle to find local competition, and it all started coming together.  I had not thought of it before, but Title IX was definitely something that could have had a large impact on the decision.  Even if the women’s team was performing better than the men’s team according to the Health and Vitality report, it would not be cost-effective for the athletic department to cut the men’s program without cutting the women’s program in the same sport.  If the department cut only one of the gymnastics teams, it would have to continue to pay for the gymnastics facilities whereas if it decided to cut both teams, it would not.  Things were finally starting to make a little more sense.  My coach went on to inform me that the coach of the women’s team at the time of the cuts had been planning on quitting before the following season and the athletic department was aware of that fact before they made the cuts.  The department knew that they would be responsible for finding a new gymnastics coach if they kept gymnastics as a varsity team, and I don’t doubt this also played a role in the decision to cut gymnastics[11].

Throughout my investigation I acquired numbers, facts, conflicting information and even a little biased information.  As I sorted through it all, I came to a few conclusions.  Because of the controversial nature of the issue at hand and the spectrum of information I obtained, many of my conclusions are educated speculations and not immutable facts.  However, I still believe that I was able to draw some valuable conclusions from what I learned.  The first of my findings after an unfruitful search for information about the football team’s performance in the Health and Vitality rankings was that there is no reason to believe that there was any kind of partiality to football on the part of the athletics department at the time the cuts were made.  Finding proof or even more information on this topic would involve more extensive investigation and probably discovery of more biased information, so I decided to leave this notion alone.  What I did find, however, is that the eight teams that were cut did not seem to be performing up to DAPER’s standards, and the economic downturn and required cuts in 2009 gave the department an opportunity to cut the teams.  The athletic department felt that the teams were taking away from the overall health of the other programs whether the reasons were financial or not, and it believed that getting rid of these eight programs would contribute to the health of NCAA sports at MIT overall.

Additionally, I realized that the decision to cut women’s gymnastics was probably affected the most by Title IX and by the fact that the women’s coach was planning on leaving in the year following the cuts.  I think nobody really considered Title IX as a reason for the cuts before because Title IX is often used to promote women’s sports, but in this case it happened to work against a women’s sport.  Considering Title IX in making the cuts certainly added equality to the result.  After looking again at the sports that were cut, I noticed that three co-ed sports, three men’s sports, and two women’s sports were cut, producing a nearly equal reduction of men’s and women’s sports.  I will not call this fair or unfair, but I do believe that women’s gymnastics was in the wrong position at the wrong time in this situation.  Some believe that this decision to cut gymnastics was misinformed and others were just disappointed to have lost the benefits of a varsity team, but what I discovered from this investigation was that there are many more differing opinions about the matter than I ever could have imagined.

Though it may seem as if cutting sports would not have had too much of an impact on programs that were able to remain club teams, gymnastics was greatly hurt by the decision to cut the team, and the team is still struggling to survive as a club team.  We have barely enough team members to get a team score, and we continue to struggle to recruit.  Gymnastics requires a certain skill level and experience, and many who are at the skill level our team requires have been working at the sport for almost their entire lives.  It is difficult to convince athletes to come to a school where they will not be treated as varsity athletes when in many cases they can easily choose schools where they will have the benefits of varsity status.  Club status means that we do not have trainers to treat injured athletes or paid coaches to help us with our skills anymore.  Our team trips and attire are not paid for, and we are responsible for reserving our own time in the gymnastics facility.  We have to be self-sustaining and it is not easy to do that in a sport like gymnastics.

At the end of the day, MIT’s large athletics program is a big part of what brings many bright minds to MIT.  It is certainly a selling point for MIT, but as we cut sports we lose the ability to attract students who are interested in the sports we are eliminating.  I know that if MIT did not have a gymnastics team I probably would have ended up at Caltech or even Arizona State University where I could have competed for an NCAA varsity team.  If the gymnastics team (or any other cut team) dies out within the next few years, we could potentially lose great students and great contributors to the MIT community to a different school that offers an athletics program that MIT now lacks.  I hope the athletics department never lost sight of this in their decisions in 2009.

We all wonder about the truth behind DAPER’s given economic reasons for the cuts when we have seen the fencing room being remodeled, Rockwell Cage getting new bleachers, the football team getting RIFD readers to analyze their plays, and more seemingly unnecessary costs for the athletic department this year.  It almost seems like the athletics department has forgotten the reasons they allegedly eliminated our teams.  At this point we cannot change what has already been done.  We just have to make the best of the situation and move forward.  MIT’s women’s gymnastics team won a national championship last year despite having the fewest team members of any of the major competitors in the meet, and we are doing our best to stay strong as a team despite our circumstances.  We are enjoying the gymnastics experience while we can, and that’s really the most we can do.  Unfortunately there may not be much of a future for us, but for now we are still the crazy, fun-loving and nerdy team we have always been.  I am proud to say I am and will always be an MIT beaver.

I’m a beaver, You’re a beaver, We are beavers all,

And when we get together, We do the beaver call:

e to the u du dx, e to the x dx,

cosine, secant, tangent, sine,

3.14159

integral, radical, mu, dv

slipstick, sliderule, MIT!

Goooo Tech!

 

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