OPINION: During our time at the University of Maine, we interact with a variety of campus facilities. We live in the dorms, study in the library and eat in the dining halls. There are also facilities utilized by various groups on campus. Club Sports, in particular, have high needs for communal spaces, ranging from fields for practice to pools for swim meets. However, they are not given priority when it comes to accessing these places.
Club athletes are often overlooked in favor of Division 1 (D1) sports teams and people from outside our community, which is unfair.
As UMaine students, we should all have equal access to campus facilities. It’s unreasonable for outside groups to be able to pay money for priority and for our university to prioritize their needs over its own students. Our sports teams should not be kicked off the field to accommodate other universities’ teams for practice, such as Husson University.
Sports clubs should be granted the same access to campus facilities as D1 teams.
UMaine’s Club Swim has to pay to host a home meet, staff the event with lifeguards and rent the blocks that the team uses to dive into the pool. They have to spend $5,000 throughout the semester just to swim and host one meet for the year.
“We weren’t being charged lifeguard fees until we had bumped up a tier in our funding status and gained more money as a club. If these fees were truly necessary for the club to cover, we would have been charged regardless of our funding level, not only after we received an increase,” said Skye Van Beek, Club Swim’s President.
A majority of the funding the club allocates is spent on these fees.
“The club has also experienced times where we have had to change our meetings last minute because of facilities giving the pool to the D1 teams,” said Van Beek.
Club Swim is not the only team that has faced this issue. I have heard similar stories about other club teams being unable to use on campus facilities for practice because of D1 teams or external groups such as the YMCA, which have been able to reserve the facilities and receive priority over our club sports teams.
Those who don’t even pay to go to school here are being favored over campus groups whose members pay to reserve the facilities on top of their tuition.
UMaine doesn’t seem to genuinely care about its students in club sports. They are the ones who should be given priority on this campus because they pay large amounts of money just to be here. If a university isn’t operating in the best interests of its students, it shouldn’t be operating at all. Club Sport athletes should be given equal access and priority to campus facilities.
