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10.1177/0193723504268728JOURNAL OF SPORT & SOCIAL ISSUES / November 2004CANADIAN UNIVERSITY SPORT FACILITIES

FUNDING CANADIAN UNIVERSITY SPORT FACILITIES

The University of Toronto Stadium Referendum

Helen Lenskyj

Since the 1990s, students have been resisting the increasing corporatization of Canadian and American university campuses. More recently, administra- tive attempts to impose higher student activity fees to fund stadiums and other sporting facilities have been met with student opposition. In 2001, a ref- erendum was held at the University of Toronto, Canada, on the issue of a mandatory student levy to fund a new stadium. This case study will be ana- lyzed using concepts and insights from research on community stadium tax referenda.

Keywords: university sport; student politics; stadium funding; equity

As in most Western industrialized nations, Canadian and Americanuniversities have recently experienced significant cutbacks in gov-ernment subsidies and unprecedented fee increases. In this cli- mate of “academic capitalism” (Slaughter & Leslie, 1997), postsecondary education has become a consumer product with a price tag that reflects whatever the market will bear. At the same time, many nonacademic costs have been passed on to students through universal student fees.

Of particular concern are the trends toward increased reliance on pri- vate funding and the growth of market-driven programs, particularly in business and technology. In these classic, sleeping-giant scenarios, critics express concern that a university entering into a partnership with a corpo- ration may jeopardize the institution’s autonomy and the academic freedom of its students and faculty by giving corporate funders the right to influence the direction of research, suppress the publication of unfavorable findings, and hold exclusive licenses on patentable discoveries. The growing corporatization of universities in Canada, the United States, Australia, and Europe, as well as the negative impacts on both student access and academic freedom, have been extensively documented (e.g., see Coady, 1999; Klein, 2000; Lenskyj, 2002, chapter 6; Pannu, Schugurensky, & Plumb, 1994; Patience, 1999/2000; Quirke & Davies, 2002; Tudiver, 1999).

The University of Toronto’s (UT’s) 1992 statement of purpose provides useful criteria by which to evaluate the new corporatized model:

Journal of Sport & Social Issues, Volume 28, No. 4, November 2004, pp. 379-396 DOI: 10.1177/0193723504268728 © 2004 Sage Publications

The rights of freedom of speech, academic freedom, and freedom of research . . . are meaningless unless they entail the right to raise deeply disturbing ques- tions and provocative challenges to the cherished beliefs of society at large and of the university itself. It is this human right to radical, critical teaching and research with which the University has a duty above all to be concerned. (UT, 1992, p. 3)

Regarding the specific issue to be addressed here—funding the con- struction of a university sports stadium—it should be noted that academic freedom also encompasses the right to challenge the cherished beliefs under- pinning university sport programs and departments of physical education and the right to question the privileged place accorded the male- dominated competitive sport model in the university and broader society.

OTHER STADIUM DEBATES: PROFESSIONAL SPORT

Although there has been little analysis of university stadium funding, much has been written about public subsidizing of professional sport facili- ties and the imposition of community-wide stadium taxes. Numerous exposés of major league sport franchises’ power over American and Cana- dian communities in general and over taxpayers’ money in particular have appeared in the last decade (e.g., Brown & Paul, 1999; Cagan & deMause, 1998; Danielson, 1997; Euchner, 1993; Noll & Zimbalist, 1997; Paul & Brown, 2001; Rosentraub, 1997). Examining events surrounding the 1996 Cincinnati sports stadia tax referendum, Brown and Paul (1999) summarized their findings as follows:

It has now become the norm for professional sports franchises to threaten to move to secure additional financial benefits from local governments. The bene- fits take the form of new stadia, stadia renovations (sky boxes and luxury seats), and greater shares of the revenues raised by television, ticket sales, parking, advertising, and concession sales. (p. 221)

Concluding his reviews of Mark Rosentraub’s Major League Losers (1997) and Michael Danielson’s Home Team (1997), Arthur Johnson (1998) lamented that despite these kinds of exemplary publications, “academics have been [ineffective] in bringing about any change in the debate that sur- rounds the stadium issue, let alone in bringing about a demise to the corpo- rate welfare system that supports professional sport in the United States” (p. 581). He concluded,

One must ask whether it is the strength of the emotionalism of sports, the lack of power of academics within urban politics, the lack of respect given to policy analysis in decision-making circles, or other factors that lead to such little suc- cess. (Johnson, 1998, p. 581)

On the issue of stadium tax referenda, one study found that between 1984 and 2000, there were 37 occasions when American voters were asked to

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decide whether public funds should be used for the construction of profes- sional sport stadiums and arenas (Paul & Brown, 2001). On a smaller scale, several referenda have been conducted on American campuses to ascertain students’ willingness to pay higher activity fees to subsidize university sta- diums, fitness facilities, and student centers. Before examining these devel- opments, I will provide a broader context by reviewing patterns of student activism on university campuses.

STUDENT ACTIVISM SINCE THE 1990s

Student groups in Canada and the United States have had some recent successes in resisting the corporate takeover of campuses, for exam- ple, by challenging sweatshop production of university merchandise, uneth- ical overseas investments, and pharmaceutical and tobacco industries’ research funding. At the UT in March 2000, Students Against Sweatshops occupied President Robert Prichard’s office for 11 days to pressure the administration to boycott university-identified sportswear and other cloth- ing manufactured under sweatshop and child labor conditions. A few months later, UT became the first Canadian university to introduce a trade- mark licensing policy and a code of conduct for licensees of UT merchandise.

Later in 2000, in keeping with the anticorporate critique developed by many student groups, the UT Student Administrative Council (SAC) resolved that all orientation week activities and materials should be logo free. Despite this progressive step, first-year students found materials in their frosh kits that promoted Toronto’s 2008 Olympic bid and bore the bid committee’s trademark—a logo that symbolized the same kinds of multina- tional corporations that SAC had outlawed.

In 2000, students at Laval and the University of Quebec at Montreal campaigned against deals with Coca-Cola and Pepsi for exclusive rights to sell their products on campus, whereas students at McGill held a referen- dum that disrupted the university’s proposed deal with Coca-Cola involving exclusive vending rights in return for about $1 million annually for 11 years.1 As one critic pointed out, whereas companies used to give financial help to schools and universities as a public relations gesture, the current corporate agenda was to maximize the leverage generated by these gifts to broker future lucrative deals (Aubin, 2000). The next year, students at Con- cordia University succeeded in getting Zoom Media Inc. advertisements removed from washrooms and pressured the administration to replace the campus food service provider, Sodexho Marriott, because of the connection between its major shareholder, Sodexho Alliance, and the private prison industry (Bernans, 2001; Swoger, 2000).

STUDENT RESISTANCE TO ESCALATING ACTIVITY FEES

On American university campuses, there were examples of student opposition to activity fee increases for the construction of stadia and other sport facilities throughout the 1990s and early 2000s:

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• In 1995, Middle Tennessee State University students demanded a referendum after the university had imposed a large arbitrary increase in student activity fees to pay for the expansion of the stadium for the sole purpose of upgrading the football program to Division A (Blackwood, 1995).

• In 1997, the University of Washington students’ association proposed policy changes to increase student control over allocation of student services and activ- ity fees thereby challenging a 1987 Board of Regents’ decision, enacted despite student protest, that had directed $86,000 of these fees for renovations to the football stadium (“Show Me the Money,” 1997).

• In 1997, a student referendum at Kansas State University narrowly defeated a proposed mandatory student fee to help pay for the expansion of the university’s stadium (“No Fee Hike,” 1997).

• At the University of Illinois, a student fee increase to pay off the debt on stadium and other athletic facility renovations came to the attention of the Illinois Board of Higher Education, which urged the university to let students vote on the $68- per-year fee increase (“Student Vote Urged,” 1997).

• In 1999, California State University, Northridge students opposed a proposed 3- year fee increase of $75 per semester for a recreation center (Alvarez, 1999).

More radical student action at Ohio State University in the 1999/2000 school year involved protests against the university’s $187 million expendi- ture for football stadium renovations while janitors and cafeteria workers were being denied a living wage. Pickets by students and union members delayed construction for 1 day, and a $2 hourly increase was eventually won for 1,900 university employees (Meatto, 2000).

In an example of proposed shared use with a professional team, plans were released in 2001 for a $500-million, retractable-roof football stadium seating 68,500, to be shared by the Minnesota Vikings and the University of Minnesota, located on the university campus. The partnership developed after the Vikings’ owners had failed to obtain public funding for the project (“Minnesota Vikings,” 2001). Not surprisingly, students subsequently raised concerns about lack of student input into the process, funding issues and responsibilities, and benefits to students (Student Senate, 2002).

Along with these challenges on the part of student groups, there have been some examples of more democratic decision making on funding matters:

• Utah State University students developed a proposal for a fitness center, and in 2000 they approved by referendum a fee increase of $11.50 per semester for its construction and a $63 fee for access after its completion (Stewart, 2000).

• In 2000, University of Colorado students approved a student recreation center and health care facility with most of the students’ $24 million budget, the largest student-run budget in the United States, to be allocated to these projects (Scanlon, 2000).

• At the University of California at Riverside, in a 2001 referendum, 71% of stu- dents supported a fee increase of $90 per quarter for a new commons (Tresaugue, 2001).

• The Oregon University System established a student building fund—$35 per semester per student—for nonacademic, student-oriented renovation or

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construction projects such as stadiums, fitness centers, sports fields, student centers, and, on occasion, day care centers; in 2001, $1.25 million was allocated for stadium renovations and relocation of soccer and recreational fields (“Student Building Fee,” 2003).

• In 2003, a University of North Dakota student referendum approved a $50-per- semester fee increase to fund a new wellness center (Dodds, 2003).

• In 2003, students at the University of Illinois at Springfield voted for a 3-year fee increase ($60/$90/$165 per semester) as the primary source of funding for a new recreation and fitness center (Pokorski, 2003).

These American examples, although few in number, suggest some- what more student support for projects that are of potential or actual bene- fit to the entire student body—for example, student centers and wellness/ fitness facilities—and less support for projects geared solely toward compet- itive sport, most notably, football stadiums. It should be acknowledged that the kinds of stadiums envisioned on American campuses are bigger and costlier than those in Canada where there is no equivalent of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) system. At the same time, it might be predicted that the salience of intercollegiate sport in the life of American university students would work in favor of proposals to increase student fees for stadium construction. Although there are insufficient cases to estab- lish a clear trend, they do suggest pockets of resistance to university admin- istrations’ attempts to increase student fees for the sole purpose of funding elite sport facilities.

FOLLOWING THE BIG LEAGUE?

In their analysis of the 1996 Cincinnati stadia referendum, Brown and Paul (1999) explained how the pro-tax side, with its almost unlimited resources, succeeded in defining the issue, controlling the media message, and ultimately winning a landslide victory. Reviewing economists and social scientists’ findings regarding public subsidies of sport franchises, they iden- tified five key patterns:

(a) Those who stand to gain financially from the construction of new stadia will support the sales tax increase;

(b) efforts will be made to distribute the costs as widely as possible among the public;

(c) the more heterogeneous, broadbased anti-tax forces will have greater diffi- culty obtaining resources and getting organized than the more focused institutional interests listed above;

(d) because the tax’s fate will be determined by a majoritarian process, efforts will be made to sweeten the pot to achieve at least a minimum winning coali- tion; and

(e) the ability of the competing sides to frame the electoral question will be an important determining factor in the electoral outcome. (Brown & Paul, 1999, p. 222)

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I will return to these principles following a discussion of events leading up to and during the UT referendum on a proposed mandatory student levy to fund construction of a new stadium and renovation of the ice sports arena. As the only faculty member participating on the planning committee of the Coalition Against the Varsity Centre Levy, my perspective is that of an insider within the No Levy Campaign.

VARSITY CENTRE DEBATES

In January 2002, ongoing discussions about the future of the Varsity Stadium site conducted by the UT Project Planning Committee, chaired by the Dean of the Faculty of Physical Education and Health (FPEH), Bruce Kidd, produced a report titled Varsity Centre for Field and Ice Sports (Pro- ject Planning Committee, 2002). The proposed funding for the new center depended on a mandatory student levy, which would have required full-time students to pay $25 for the next 3 years; then $70, indexed to 3% inflation; and increasing to $143 over a 25-year period.

In the words of the promotional materials, students would be invited into a “partnership” with the university, which would provide $1 for every $2 that students contributed. This was represented as unprecedented univer- sity generosity: its largest ever, single contribution to a capital project. It was patronizingly assumed that students were incapable of understanding the real meaning of a partnership in which they paid two thirds of the costs. With the levy to be imposed for the next 28 years, students not yet born would have been paying retroactively for a stadium that by that time would be well past its prime.

The committee publicly presented only one Varsity Centre model, which, at a cost of $55 million, critics called the Cadillac version. The 5,000- seat stadium accounted for about $29 million of the total, excluding costs for demolition of the old stadium. Interestingly, in 1999, a 2,000-seat stadium at Lehigh University (Pennsylvania) cost $2.4 million, whereas in 2002, the University of Western Ontario’s 8,000-seat stadium with aluminum bleach- ers only cost about $10 million (Baker, 2002; “Students Design Stadium,” 1999). Boosters dismissed cheaper versions as suitable only for high school students.

Another motive was to appeal to external renters, including provincial sports governing bodies, as the report explicitly stated. On that note, a sta- dium consultant quoted in a Toronto Star article claimed that soccer and Canadian Football League organizers were interested in presenting the image of a high-class product and that aluminum bleachers and other cost- saving features were not conducive to this goal (Baker, 2002). A few months later, another Star article reported that the Canadian Soccer Association was seeking government funding for a proposed 30,000-seat, $75-million stadium in Toronto (Da Costa, 2003).

On a practical note, the report proposed using a City of Toronto venue, Lamport Stadium, during the 4 years of stadium demolition and

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construction. If this creative alternative was feasible for 4 years, critics asked why UT could not enter into a long-term arrangement. In times of gov- ernment cutbacks to both municipalities and universities, it made sense to maximize shared use of expensive stadiums, arenas, and other facilities. Indeed, since the 1970s, the City of Toronto Parks and Recreation Depart- ment and Toronto Board of Education had a long and successful record of shared use with several new elementary schools at that time having pools and gyms subsidized with city money and offering a range of joint programs to students and the wider community. Conversely, in 1973, after former UT vice-president Jill Ker Conway had secured provincial and federal govern- ment grants to build UT’s Athletic Centre, one of its major selling points to ratepayers’ groups was its availability to the community (Conway, 1994, pp. 225-226). Currently, community memberships can be purchased, and the pool is open free of charge to the general public for several hours every Sunday.

From the outset, the student leaders involved in the Varsity Centre planning process were firmly opposed to the idea of a mandatory student levy to help fund the $55 million enterprise and were shocked to find, in late 2001, that the budget relied on funds generated through such a levy. On Jan- uary 15, 2002, the Council on Student Services, which had decision-making authority regarding student services fees, rejected the proposed levy. More than 25,000 students, represented by the Association of Part-time Students (APUS), the Association of Social Science Students Union, and the Graduate Students’ Association (GSU), opposed both the levy and the referendum. Two months later, the SAC also took a stand opposing the levy. As a result, following university policy on student services fees, the issue was put to a binding referendum in which all part-time and full-time students were eligible to vote.

With the unprecedented crisis over tuition fees, many argued that it was inappropriate, even offensive, to expect struggling students to pay a levy of this amount in what Dean Kidd also acknowledged was a “difficult financial climate.” One graduate student, a single mother with two children, explained why she had to take a half-time job: “After racking up a huge OSAP [Ontario Student Assistance Plan] debt, I felt it would be irresponsi- ble to continue to amass debt to pass on to my children” (“Some Weighty Words,” 2002, p. 8). Unlike this student, the Project Planning Committee appeared untroubled by the prospect of a debt of more than $29 million to be passed on to future generations.

Athletics remain UT’s highest student services fee, having increased more than 6% between 1998 and 2002, and the levy called for a further 39% increase. No other fee—for services such as the Career Centre, counseling and learning skills, family care, health, psychiatric, and housing—had seen this kind of increase, which was largely a result of UT Governing Council’s withdrawal of operating budget support for cocurricular athletics and recre- ation in the early 1990s.

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A LEGAL LEVY?

Students opposed to the levy challenged its legality in light of existing policy. The university’s Budget Policies and Procedures (Budget Planning Secretariat, 1993), dated September 1993, stated that ancillary student fees “will not cover capital costs of building renovation and construction” (p. 36), and student organizations held the position that such fees should only be used for services, and not for bricks and mortar. The Yes Campaign litera- ture claimed that another clause of the policy provided for ancillary fees to be used for “specific limited projects.” If this were true, the latter clause was a loophole that made the former totally meaningless. In fact, the Varsity Centre plan (Project Planning Committee, 2002) stated explicitly that stu- dent dollars “will help fund increased salary costs of the new facility, pay down the loan for construction costs, and create a new maintenance and repair fund” (p. 26)—the latter a long-term enterprise that could not be said to qualify as a specific limited project.

Stadium and levy supporters also cited precedents, alleging that lev- ies had been imposed to fund UT facilities “for more than a hundred years” (“Varsity Overhaul,” 2002, p. C4). The student center at UT’s Scarborough campus, 50% ($20 million) of which was funded by student services fees, was a favorite example. However, Sundeep Singh, president of the Scarborough Campus Students’ Council in 2002, explained the key differences between their student center and the proposed Varsity Centre:

The UTSC [Scarborough] student centre has been a student-driven project. . . . The student centre will be the focus of student life, containing numerous facili- ties and spaces for students. All aspects of the centre will be under student direction, including all financial matters. The student centre was paid for by students for students to use and control. The Varsity project does not have this crucial and central student element. . . . Students truly do not play a large role in the management and operation of such facilities. Decision-making falls into the hands of UT staff. (S. Singh, personal communication, February 11, 2002)

The plans for rental use of the new stadium amply supported Singh’s explanation. The report stated that there would be 35 to 80 potential rental hours per week for outside user groups in spring and summer and that the committee had already begun soliciting interest among stakeholders and sports governing bodies. Although students would be making a major finan- cial contribution toward stadium construction and operating costs, outside renters would derive more benefits than the thousands of students who leave the campus during spring and summer months after regular classes had ended.

Varsity Centre supporters were on thin ice when they described it as a vibrant new student hub with additional student activity space promoting a much-needed sense of community. In reality, only about 7% of the space was designated for nonathletic activity. In contrast, the entire UT Scarborough student center was dedicated to student use—lounges, food services, space

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for student associations and clubs, and so on—and would undoubtedly serve to promote community identity. However, not all Scarborough students embraced the hyperbolic claim made by one student leader that the building represented “student empowerment”; as one student countered, “Probably it just represents a place to sit down and eat something, man” (“Editorial,” 2003, p. 3). In the same cynical vein, a banner displayed by opponents of the Varsity Centre levy asked, “How dumb do they think we are?”

Indeed, given a university’s function to promote critical thinking, it was not surprising that the majority of UT students were not swayed by the Yes Campaign’s rhetoric that mere bricks and mortar would “revitalize ath- letics and recreation and student life in general” (“Varsity Overhaul,” 2002, p. C4). A logical critic might argue that (a) the need for revitalization in these three areas had not been established; (b) if students’ interest in athlet- ics and recreation was in fact lagging (as the alleged need for revitalizing implies), current facilities would not be overcrowded or inadequate; and (c) the link between quality of student life and availability of recreational facili- ties on campus had not been established (e.g., many students studying at a commuter university such as UT use recreational facilities in their home communities).

The Yes Campaign’s references to the “new dynamic neighbourhood” at Bloor Street and Devonshire Place with the stadium serving as the “active centrepiece for a neighbourhood of four student residences” (Watt, 2002, p. 1) blurred the important distinction between the student resi- dences, which were self-funding, and the Varsity Centre, which was the only project to which the levy would apply and the only project relevant to the referendum.

A front-page story in the student newspaper, The Varsity, and a simi- lar version by the same writer, Ian Ferguson, in the community paper, the Annex Gleaner, distorted these facts by stating that “to sweeten the deal, the plan includes 800 beds for a new student residence” (Ferguson, 2002c, p. 1; see also Ferguson, 2002b). Equally disturbing, Ferguson’s Gleaner article generally presented the new development as a fait accompli and downplayed the referendum. Two weeks later, the Varsity finally published a letter pointing out this distortion (Schramm, 2002) and apologized for the error. Of course, from another perspective, Yes Campaigners realized the importance of making strategic references to the student housing compo- nent and emphasizing the administration’s sensitivity to student needs (e.g., “Varsity Overhaul,” 2002).

The fait accompli rhetoric was also apparent in mainstream coverage: For example, a story that appeared in Southam Publications papers in other Canadian cities following a January press conference organized by support- ers was replete with gushing enthusiasm for the Varsity Centre plan (“Var- sity Overhaul,” 2002). The article, approximately 500 words in length, included only four sentences of critique, noting a student leader’s concerns about escalating student debt loads.

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BUILD IT AND EQUITY WILL COME . . .

The Program Planning Committee faced the challenge of making the levy palatable to students outside of the relatively small FPEH and students who did not play varsity or intramural sports. The liberal tone of the report blurred the distinction between the overall programming philosophy and the actual planned facilities—a stadium and an ice arena. Its authors emphasized the importance of a sport-for-all philosophy and the recognition of minor sports like broomball and (women’s) field hockey while at the same time downplaying the obvious fact that the high-profile sports of men’s foot- ball and ice hockey would be best served by the new facilities. In fact, a year later, in a move that exemplified the second-class status of minor sports, the UT women’s field hockey team resorted to a fundraising enterprise selling Maybelline beauty products in the Athletic Centre lobby.

Ironically, some of the same proponents of the stadium had been at the forefront of a 1980s initiative to stop university funding of men’s football on the grounds that it was too expensive and too male dominated, but, in this 2002 report, men’s football was now touted as generating university commu- nity spirit. One could argue that it was difficult to represent 5,000 people sit- ting in the stands watching a few dozen men on the field as sport for all. The fact that the UT men’s football team was under attack for its long losing streak was raised by some critics as yet another contradiction, and some even argued that the team did not deserve financial support from FPEH and that the money could be directed to the winning teams, especially women’s teams, that were underfunded. Despite some anecdotal and journalistic sup- port for the idea that people will vote in favor of a sports tax if their team has had recent successes, Paul and Brown’s (2001) analysis of 37 community ref- erenda found no evidence of this outcome. Moreover, I would question the principle that winning is the only goal of university sport or that funding should depend on a team’s success, but, in light of the field hockey example above, it would certainly seem that some UT women’s teams were in a desperate situation.

On other equity issues, the underrepresentation of Asian, South Asian, and Chinese students in Canadian football and ice sports when com- pared to their high numbers in the UT study population is problematic. Moreover, with ongoing backlash against the Athletic Centre’s affirmative action initiatives (women-only weight room and pool hours), despite best efforts of the FPEH Gender Equity Task Force and Athletic Centre staff, it seems clear that equity initiatives require attitudinal and behavioral change before bricks and mortar and that the field-of-dreams approach to diversity is not workable.

THE CAMPAIGNS

The Yes side’s public relations campaign was enthusiastically—and generously—supported by the UT administration and its Department of Public Affairs. In the latter case, the UT Bulletin, as well as the official UT

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Web site (see www.utoronto.ca), initially served as mouthpieces for the Yes Campaign. However, the Bulletin editor later responded favorably to a pro- posal to have a debate on the topic, and I wrote the piece for the No side in the February 25 edition.

High-level university administrators who were actively and publicly supporting the Yes side included the president, two vice presidents, and one dean, and examples of their value-in-kind contributions included Vice Presi- dent Ron Venter’s PowerPoint presentations to five UT audiences in a 2- month period and Dean Bruce Kidd and President Robert Birgeneau’s pre- sentations at the January 11 press conference and the February 13 FPEH town hall meeting. The No Campaign could boast no similarly placed sup- port within the ranks of UT administration, and even among progressive faculty members, public statements of support were few. Moreover, the pro- posed plan, with its mandatory student levy component, had been approved by all levels of the university administration.

President Birgeneau also expressed his support by distributing a long e-mail to all student societies and recognized campus groups. Justifying the levy, he wrote, “As much as possible, the University tries to fund major capi- tal projects without asking students for a contribution” (R. Birgeneau, per- sonal communication, March 7, 2000),2 but, having explained how several of the usual external funding sources would not contribute to a sport center, he concluded by stating that “the Varsity Centre cannot be funded without stu- dent participation. To build anything less would be to shortchange students who seek co-curricular opportunities at UT. To delay further would substan- tially increase the costs” (R. Birgeneau, March 7, 2000). Supporters of the No side publicly objected to the president’s use of the student societies’ e-mail list to which they did not have access at that time, although they were able to rebut his letter in a later e-mail to all campus groups.

Funds for organizing a referendum of this kind were administered by the Referendum Conduct Committee, which comprised representatives from both sides and from the administration. The Yes Campaign was effec- tively housed in the FPEH, whereas the No Campaign was a joint venture of all four student unions with GSU and APUS taking major responsibility.

Seven part-time positions for Yes Campaign workers, whose job would be to target specific student constituencies, were advertised on the FPEH Web site on January 24, just 2 days after the University Affairs Board approved the operating plan. When challenged later about beginning the Yes Campaign before the official start date, supporters claimed they were simply “prepared.” For its part, the No Campaign did not receive full infor- mation from the Referendum Conduct Committee regarding funding for such workers until late February and was unable to complete its hiring pro- cess until March 6, more than a month later.

Events leading up to the FPEH town hall meeting were significant. On January 30, Dean Kidd sent FPEH students, faculty, and staff an e-mail urg- ing them to attend a presentation and question-and-answer session on the Varsity Centre project and student referendum. It stated, in part,

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Attendance at this meeting is VITAL; your supervisors have made arrange- ments to close your area for one hour on this date. For those staff and faculty who have to make a special trip or who must stay beyond the end of their shift, you will be paid. This project is fundamentally important to the future of the Faculty of Physical Education and Health and the University of Toronto. It will have an impact on every member of staff, every student, every faculty member, as well as to the health of the student body. I appreciate you making the time in your schedule to attend this very important meeting. (B. Kidd, January 30, 2002)

This meeting was originally scheduled for February 6 at 2 p.m. thereby clashing with the time that members of the university community and oth- ers from across Ontario would be gathering at Queens Park (the seat of the provincial government) for a rally as part of the widely advertised, Canada- wide National Student Day of Protest calling for a freeze on tuition fees. Not surprisingly, student leaders were outraged at the timing of the FPEH meet- ing. And although FPEH staff was promised payment for overtime spent at the town hall meeting, conditions under which UT staff members could attend the protest rally were markedly different. Although the university administration eventually granted amnesty to all students and employees, staff members including those from the same union as FPEH staff had to take personal leave time if they wanted to participate in the protest.

In a January 31 e-mail to Dean Kidd, GSU President Jorge Sousa explained,

We were under the assumption that you were aware of these amnesties. We believe that your office should be communicating information about the amnesty to your faculty. It appears that your decision to hold your meeting at the same time as the Queen’s Park rally contradicts the spirit of the Provost’s efforts to ensure strong UT support for the rally. We are asking that you recon- sider holding this meeting and allow the referendum process to proceed in good faith. (J. Sousa, January 31, 2002)

Dean Kidd responded to student concerns by rescheduling the meet- ing for the following Wednesday, and an e-mail message dated January 31 from FPEH spokesperson Paul Carson (January 31, 2002) asserted that “the Faculty fully supports the call for full government funding of higher educa- tion in Canada, including full funding of co-curricular opportunities for physical activity and sport.”

A January 23 e-mail from Dean Kidd to FPEH faculty and staff stated,

Given the great importance of revitalized athletic and recreation facilities at Varsity for the realization of the Faculty’s and University’s mission, all faculty and staff are encouraged to do what they can to get the message out in a posi- tive, educational way. (B. Kidd, January 23, 2002)

Print materials did, in fact, stress the value of regular physical activity and the contribution that new facilities would make to recreational and intra- mural sport. Many students who opposed the levy were in agreement that it

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was important to promote physical recreation within the university commu- nity; their objections centered on the proposed funding model.

PULLING THE VOTE

General requests for FPEH faculty, staff, and student support of the Yes side were clearly operationalized at the town hall meeting where stu- dents were urged to stand up in front of their classes and announce that stu- dents should vote yes and Athletic Centre employees were asked to get the vote out by talking to everyone they met. Interestingly, faculty were not asked to do so, or at least, not at that particular meeting, which was the only one I was invited to attend (as a cross-appointed faculty member). Shortly after, all users of the Athletic Centre had to run the gauntlet of earnest cam- paigners passing out Yes literature and subjecting them to prepared speeches on the virtues of the stadium design represented by scaled models positioned near the turnstile entrance.

The No side complained to the Referendum Conduct Committee about the Yes side’s active campaigning before the official start date, specifically noting the distribution of color postcards and posters at the Athletic Centre during the week of February 18 and the active campaigning at the Athletic Centre by staff members soliciting student support for the levy during the week of February 25. Finally, during the week that ballots were collected, the No side objected to the Yes Campaign’s promotional materials on the counter near the ballot box in the Athletic Centre. In their complaints, the No Campaign stated that such activities were “a violation of the spirit and principles of an open and honest campaign and may have irreparably com- promised the integrity of the referendum” (No Committee for the Varsity Centre Levy, March 1, 2002). Like almost every complaint from the No side, these were rejected by the Referendum Conduct Committee, and the overall process was plagued with ambiguities and distortions.

One of the most troubling aspects of the Yes Campaign was the lack of space for dissenting voices in FPEH and among members of varsity teams. There were varsity athletes and FPEH students (and some faculty) who did not support the Yes side including some who attended the No Campaign planning meetings, but many believed that the wisest route was to avoid public or visible association with the No Campaign, even though they planned privately to vote no. Students nearing graduation, for example, were relying on positive letters of reference from their professors and said they believed that public dissent might jeopardize their future job prospects. One varsity athlete who publicly expressed support for the No Levy side in the campus media was the target of harsh criticism from the team coach and from other athletes.

The referendum results proved that there was overwhelming support for the No Levy position with 78% of full-time undergraduates, 84% of part- time undergraduates, and 87% of graduate students voting no. Voter turn- out was approximately 14%—well above average—and the actual yes votes numbered only 1,123 compared to 4,974 no votes.

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COMPARISONS WITH COMMUNITY STADIUM TAX CAMPAIGNS

When examined in light of Brown and Paul’s findings (1999; Paul & Brown, 2001) on the outcomes of stadium tax referenda, the UT case study demonstrated differences between the political forces at work on one Cana- dian university campus and those influencing voting patterns in American communities.

SUPPORT WILL COME FROM THOSE WHO STAND TO GAIN FINANCIALLY

Unlike the team owners, local corporate interests, real estate inter- ests, restaurants and hotels, and financial institutions that Brown and Paul (1999; Paul & Brown, 2001) identified as stakeholders likely to profit from publicly subsidized stadiums, UT stakeholders would not necessarily have reaped direct financial gains. However, a new Varsity Stadium would have boosted the institution’s cultural capital with indirect financial implica- tions. UT would have a state-of-the-art sports center, which, boosters claimed, would enhance its reputation immeasurably and would attract the best student athletes.

Not too surprisingly, most of the high-profile stadium and levy sup- porters were FPEH faculty, staff and students, and varsity team members, but student votes in favor of the levy failed to show seamless support—or even widespread commitment to voting at all. Despite the Yes side’s regular assertions that 700+ varsity team members as well as 5,000 intramural ath- letes needed the new facilities and would support the levy, the numbers sug- gest otherwise. If it were assumed that voter turnout from this specific stu- dent athlete population would be higher than average because of personal interest in the outcome—say 20% participation—there should have been more than 1,000 yes votes from that interest group alone, and yet there were only 1,123 yes votes from the entire student body. Thus, Brown and Paul’s (1999) corollary—“The more attractive one can make an electoral issue to those likely to vote . . . the more likely it is to meet with success” (p. 220)— was not borne out in the UT case study.

COSTS WILL BE WIDELY DISTRIBUTED

Because student services fees were imposed universally rather than relying on individual user fees for recreation or social services, in theory, the financial burden was distributed equally among all students. In practice, the impact on students varied according to their socioeconomic status and their discretionary income. One male student writing in support of the levy in a campus newspaper dismissed the $70 proposed for the levy as simply “beer money” (Ferguson, 2002a)—a sentiment that would not have been shared by the significant numbers of students suffering financial hardship. At a time of escalating tuition costs, rents, utilities, living expenses, and

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student debt loads, low-income students would disproportionately bear the burden.

GETTING RESOURCES AND ORGANIZING HETEROGENEOUS ANTITAX FORCES WILL BE DIFFICULT

The UT student population was certainly heterogeneous in terms of ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and involvement in campus political issues. It was also diverse in terms of involvement in physical activity and sport, and this was probably a key factor in the voting patterns. Regardless of physical educators’ regular calls for a well-rounded university experience that integrated physical activity into everyday life, increasing numbers of students were overwhelmed with the demands of course work, part-time paid work, and family commitments, and struggling students were hardly likely to endorse a fee increase for sport facilities for which they had neither the time nor interest in using.

On the issue of access to resources, the significant barriers experi- enced by the No side have been discussed. If one counts the value-in-kind contributions made to the Yes Campaign and the shoestring budget allo- cated to the No side, a single yes vote cost significantly more that a no vote. This is, in fact, a trend identified by Paul and Brown in their 2001 article on the limits of elite influence on public opinion where they found that pro- stadium campaigns consistently outspent the opposition in 37 public refer- enda but that greater spending did not necessarily guarantee success.

SUPPORTERS WILL ATTEMPT TO SWEETEN THE POT

The blurred line between the proposed sports facilities and the stu- dent residences was often used to good effect by Yes Campaigners, and their “vibrant new student center” rhetoric failed to note the very small percent- age of total space allocated for nonathletic activities.

THE ABILITY OF THE COMPETING SIDES TO FRAME THE ELECTORAL QUESTION WILL BE CRUCIAL

Although the actual wording of the referendum question was mutu- ally agreed upon, each side developed its own discourse to frame the ques- tion during the campaigns. The Yes side’s popular “our students deserve the best” rhetoric called on community spirit and self-interest—what Johnson called the emotionalism argument about sport—but ignored the fact that the vast majority of current students, with the exception of those in or about to enter graduate programs, would have left the campus well before the building project was complete.

Earlier research reviewed by Paul and Brown (2001) and supported by their own findings suggests that an “easy” referendum issue—“short, simple and symbolic” (p. 886)—evokes a gut response, although it is more difficult to shift public opinion on a more complex issue. In the UT case study, the No

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side simply emphasized money issues: the current financial climate with unprecedented tuition increases and student debt loads.

Furthermore, as Paul and Brown (2001) demonstrated, the proportion of the public’s share in building stadiums was important, and perceptions of unfairness were likely to produce a negative referendum outcome. In the UT case, the proposed 2:1 ratio of student dollars to university dollars was no doubt seen as unfair.

THE UNIFIED ELITE HYPOTHESIS

Paul and Brown’s study (2001) found significant statistical support for the proposal that a high level of elite unity increased public support, but a different pattern emerged here. Despite a high level of elite unity at UT’s administrative level and few faculty voicing any public opposition to the levy, the Yes side lost.

CONCLUSION

The UT case study demonstrates a number of flaws in prevailing atti- tudes and practices in university sport. If equity is a real goal of the univer- sity, it is essential that its sport and recreation facilities serve as a genuine community resource based on a shared-funding/shared-use model with school boards, municipal, state/provincial, and federal governments. Con- versely, there should be serious attempts to maximize shared use of commu- nity facilities where appropriate for university sport and recreation. Efforts are needed to develop alternative physical activity, wellness, and sport pro- grams that challenge the male-dominated professional team sport model; shared-funding/shared-use arrangements between university and profes- sional leagues are unlikely to achieve equity goals.

NOTES 1. Canadian dollars are used for Canadian examples and American dollars for U.S.

examples; the Canadian dollar at the time of writing was worth approximately U.S.$0.73.

2. Most of the e-mail messages cited in this article were originally distributed to long lists of recipients; however, they are not included in the references because, to the best of my knowledge, they are not archived and therefore are no longer recoverable.

AUTHOR

Helen Lenskyj is a professor in the Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. Her research interests include gender, sport and sexualities, and critiques of the Olympic industry. Her latest book is Out on the Field: Gender, Sport and Sexualities (Women’s Press, 2003).

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