Should UC San Diego elevate its non-football athletics to NCAA Division I? Yes 60% (84533) No 40% (56364) 140897 total votes.

In 2012, UC San Diego students voted against a fee increase referendum that would facilitate the university’s transition from Division II to Division I athletics. A more expensive referendum with the same purpose will reappear on the student ballot this month, but the results shouldn’t be any different from four years ago, when 64 percent of the student body derailed the administration’s plan to take more money from their pockets.

The move on the university’s behalf to again raise the Division I vote tells us two things: One, UC San Diego cannot accept that the majority of our intellectual student body has no interest in sports. And two, UC San Diego needs $$$. This second indication isn’t as surprising as the first.

State Auditor Elaine Howle recently discovered UC campuses lowered admissions standards for nonresidents to collect heightened out-of-state tuition. With an 82 percent increase in nonresident enrollment and a 1 percent decrease in resident enrollment between 2010 and 2015, the university deliberately rejected hardworking Californians to cash-in on out-of-state applicants. If the financial state of the university is as dire as is must be to turn away state residents from the state education they’re entitled to, then a multimillion-dollar investment in Division I athletics isn’t the next step.

Athletes and sports enthusiasts make up a marginal community on campus, and their emphatic support of the Division I move is the driving force behind the campaign. Disregarding popular interest, they advocate for the fee increase because it’s in accordance with their agendas. As a way to justify this selfishness, supporters of the referendum claim that a Division I athletics program will invigorate the small, flickering flame that is UC San Diego school spirit. This is not the case. The reality is that most of our students don’t attend sports events because they choose not to, regardless of our athletic performance or division. New uniforms, facilities and competition can’t buy “Triton Pride.” Our enthusiasm remains invested in our world-class education and fields of study.

But even if the referendum were to pass this month, it would still be another three years before any trace of the Division I move would be visible. The steps toward a fully functioning Division I university are long, arduous and expensive, and if a new athletics program was approved, it would be current students sowing the seeds future students would reap. The first year of the move would consist entirely of funding, and in the second we would join the Big West Conference on an interim basis. At the latest, UC San Diego will lose its provisional status in 2022, after most of the students who have paid for the new athletics program have already graduated.

The catastrophic effects of UC San Diego becoming a Division I university are many, but the most concrete of them are exposed by breaking down the numbers. First, the fee, which is phased in over the course of three years to obscure the high cost, will add $180 to student tuition the first year, $165 the second year, and $135 the third year. At the end of this three-year period, students will be paying a regular $480 on top of their yearly tuition. This money will go toward scouting new talent and paying the “cost of living” stipend for athletes who will lower our academic standard. The sum is an appalling amount for the university to ask for when considering more than half of our student body doesn’t care about sports.

Of all the requests made on the university’s behalf regarding the move to Division I, the most condemning detail has to do with the grounds on which they were made. According to a 2015 NCAA Revenues and Expenses report, from 2004-2014 the Division IAAA (meaning, Division I universities without football programs like UC San Diego) subdivision’s median expenses in excess of generated revenue was $11.245 million. The NCAA also revealed that “no athletics program in this subdivision has reported positive net generated revenues” and “net losses have increased steadily over the 11-year period.” In spite of these bleak statistics, students are asked to pour their money into the futile endeavor of Division I sports. Sadly for the university, we’re smarter than that.

There are too many neglected problems and financial burdens plaguing our university, and too much uninterest for an investment in athletics to make any sense.

In the past month, there have been multiple student suicides, bringing into question the effectiveness of our Counseling and Psychological Services, which has a four-week waiting period for patients in need. There have also been numerous protests addressing underrepresentation and racism on campus that the university seems to neglect. UC San Diego is too dismayed with more important issues to consider Division I athletics at this time. We are a university of pragmatic thinkers, which is why voting no on the fee increase referendum this month is the obvious choice.

Zamudio is a third-year student at UCSD majoring in writing.