The Associated Student Body passed a bill during the Tuesday, March 17, formal ASB Senate session that would disband the athletics committee.
ASB President Jack Jones plans to approve the committee’s dissolution, making the measure official.
All members of the athletics committee presented SB 26-11 on the senate floor, which called for the athletics committee to be dissolved. Athletics Committee Chair Jack Turrentine, a junior public policy leadership and rhetoric double major from Knoxville, Tenn., spearheaded the presentation.
“This is something that we have been working on for a couple months, we wanted to push it to the senate so it would be as easy as possible to roll over dissolving the committee on athletics,” Turrentine said.
The athletics committee was designed to serve as a liaison between the university’s student body and Ole Miss Athletics. The committee was first organized to represent student interests in athletics and to promote student engagement and school spirit.
“We have not been able to do a ton, and I do not think that is (from) the lack of effort. I think from the outside looking in it is easy to make an assumption,” Turrentine said. “We came in with the mindset that we were going to make some changes. We were going to have some projects, maybe if it wasn’t a bill before, we were going to make something happen. But that is just not structurally possible with the way the athletics committee is structurally set up.”
Trey McKean, previous vice chair of the athletics committee and current candidate for ASB vice president, explained that the committee’s past special projects included efforts to expand space for registered student organization tailgates in the Grove during football season, to facilitate hunting license purchases and to create a quiz that would match students to registered student organizations based on interests. None of these projects, among others, gained traction logistically to move forward with implementation, he said.
McKean pointed to a lack of cohesion with Ole Miss Athletics as the reason for the committee’s inability to execute its goals. He said there was not a direct, efficient line of communication between Ole Miss Athletics and the athletics committee.
“(The athletic department has) so many things to worry about, and we’re just low on the totem pole. They do a fantastic job, but we’re just not the priority,” McKean said.
ASB Principal of Athletics Sarah Claire Sypeck and the ASB executive department have achieved better communication with Ole Miss Athletics, working with Vaught-Hemingway Stadium to carry out much of what the athletics committee was designed to do. This work has included efforts to lower concession prices.
SB 26-11 was unanimously passed on the senate floor, effectively dissolving the athletics committee.
The student life committee will take over the responsibilities of the now-dissolved athletics committee, which include the recreational portion of athletics, collaboration with the South Campus Recreation Center and other similar duties.
