Funding for ESPN Still Up in the Air

By Andrew Arenge

Last fall when President Janet Morgan Riggs reversed the decision that had been made previously to remove the ESPN cable package from the channel offerings at Gettysburg College, members of the college’s student media inquired as to where the administration planned on finding the reported $34,000 to fund this reversal. At a Blue Crocodiles press conference where Riggs initially announced the reversal, she said, “We have not quite figured that out yet.” She commented that this decision would be determined by Rod Tosten, Vice President of Information Technology.

Towards the end of last semester, both Vice President Tosten and President Riggs were asked again if they had determined what steps would be taken to fully fund ESPN and they both commented that a decision had yet to be reached.

“It’s not quite as simple as [finding money]. The IT division has a target for reducing their budget, and they were going to eliminate ESPN to help reach that target. At this point, they will have to find those dollars elsewhere in their division, but they may be spread across various areas” said Riggs.

Tosten commented, “ESPN is just one piece of IT’s budget. We are working to be thoughtful and gain some more lessons learned from all of our budget strategies. We are investigating many different avenues of reducing costs.”

At the Blue Crocodiles weekly press conference this past Monday, Tosten was again asked to address the budget woes of his division. He mentioned that “no significant decisions” were made over the break concerning the finances or funding for ESPN. “We’re still talking about that and looking to see. That will be one of the things that we will have to keep working on.”

Tosten, however, did admit that their have been some discussions within the division to save resources but was adamant that layoffs was not something that he is considering to resolve the ESPN budget shortfall. “There have been things we’ve been doing inside of IT, we are looking at some reorganizations and those kind of things….but nobody in IT has been “let go” so to speak or has lost their position to anything related to resources or the finances or budget cutting or anything to that affect.”

With the end of the college’s fiscal year approaching at the end of May, the IT division has a limited time frame to find the $34,000 to cover the decision made at the beginning of the academic year.