Last week, in an effort to enjoy the last of the temperate autumn weather, a friend and I strolled through campus. Following a long and draining week of studying, leisurely tossing around a football for 30 or 40 minutes sounded like a perfect antidote.
Having yet to explore IU’s new turf fields on the site of the old Sembower Field next to Foster Quad, we decided to do so Friday afternoon. We had been throwing the ball for at least 15 minutes when, as I ran to catch a pass, we were approached by an individual wearing the unmistakable getup of an IU Recreational Sports employee.
I was told the fields are only available for intramural sports events. Leave it to the IU fun police to throw a wrench into an otherwise-perfect afternoon.
The baffling part is that outdoor intramural sports seasons are over for fall, so there is no real apparent reason the field shouldn’t be used. For some reason, the University would rather leave its beautiful $5 million investment to gather dust on a beautiful day.
To be fair, excessive bureaucracy and red tape go hand-in-hand with many huge public universities, not just IU.
In a situation similar to the one I encountered last week, I once re-opened a small nick on my hand while lifting weights at the SRSC. Obviously, I did the sensible thing and went to the office to get a bandage.
My head started spinning when the attendant told me bandages cost $1. IU, which charges non-residents more than $34,000 in tuition fees alone, can surely afford the cost of a bandage. Or a couple thousand.
According to the Recreational Sports website, the facility is funded largely through a mandatory student activity fee, of which $70.52 goes directly to them. It’s a fantastic facility, but it’s difficult to effectively justify charging people for being sanitary.
A lot of this comes back to the idea that so many large public colleges are bogged down by excessive bureaucracy that are capable of causing a lot more inefficiency and inconvenience than the situations described above.
Between 1985 and 2005, the number of administrators in American universities ballooned 85 percent, according to Benjamin Ginsberg’s 2011 book, “The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters.”
Again, it’s not fair to paint the added levels of bureaucracy as purely negative. Colleges are no longer just educational institutions — many, like IU, now form medium-sized communities with services that run the gamut from free legal counsel to IT help, and these require more administration. But concerns that some of this extends beyond the scope of what a college should provide may be valid, especially when all this red tape creates issues for students.
None of this is to complain. Sometimes schools grow too fast for their own good, and added levels of unnecessary bureaucracy can create major headaches for everyone. Schools like IU should take into consideration whether the rules they institute are truly in the best interest of those they are in business to serve: students.
dkilcull@indiana.edu
@daniel_kilc_
