Two years ago, The Daily Campus published a story reporting that the SMU athletic department’s deficit had climbed to $93 million since 2004, a fact student reporters discovered through documents on the Faculty Senate website.
Since then, the deficit has grown by more than $20 million, totaling more than $113 million. But students have no way of knowing about the increase unless a faculty member provides access to the documents, which are now password-protected.
Athletics Policy Committee Chair Dan Orlovsky was unaware that students couldn’t access the site. According to Orlovsky, SMU was ranked sixth out of 57 members of the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics (the reform group of faculty senates of Division 1 football schools) in a survey on transparency in governance of athletics departments.
Orlovsky said he didn’t think the coalition asked a question about whether students had access to information about the faculty senate.
“I think they just assume that faculty senate stuff is public stuff,” he said.
When asked why that wasn’t the case, Orlovsky said, “I don’t know why it’s different at SMU – I don’t know how to answer