By Travis Lyles

If Virginia State House Republican Majority Leader Kirk Cox’s bill is passed during the Virginia General Assembly 2015 legislative session, it could leave Longwood University, and other schools alike, frantically searching for supplementary athletics funds. House bill 1897 was fully approved unanimously on Monday by the House Appropriations Committee, and is heading to the House floor later this week.

Cox’s bill announced in December, and submitted January 13, aims to put a cap on the amount Virginia public colleges and universities use student fees to fund things not involved in education, specifically their athletics departments. According to the bill, schools will have five years to incrementally reduce the amount of fees they derive from students. Cox has said his bill is based on reports of the rising cost of education produced by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC), the watchdog agency for the General Assembly.

If Cox’s legislation does indeed become adopted into law, Longwood University Director of Athletics Troy Austin said, “It would heavily affect student athletes.” Currently 86 percent of the Longwood University Athletics Department’s budget comes from students.

An article by the Virginian-Pilot shows that out of the schools in Virginia that are Division I and do not have a football team, Longwood’s total fees are the highest. Longwood students pay $1,700 per year to the athletics department.

During the 2013-2014 academic year, Longwood Athletics’ budget was $9.4 million, which according to USA Today ranks in the bottom 25 Division I programs in the country. “If you look at schools our size, ours is probably the lowest,” said Austin. “Athletics at Longwood were generated to promote school spirit, raise the profile of the institution, and raise an environment for student athletes. This bill would be detrimental, and our ability to build a competitive program would be stunted greatly,” he added.

Speaking on what the bill would most directly influence, Austin said, “It would obviously affect the student athletes, and the way in which we operate our program; team travel, and some smaller things that may go unnoticed.”

According to Austin, Longwood’s current dependence on student funding is because of the school’s size, youth of the athletics program, and lack of funding from other areas such as national exposure, and donor base.

“We know we have to privately fundraise and generate more money for scholarships,” he said. “We will try to increase private giving and fundraising in big ways.”

Austin continued, “Even if you look at us and VCU, their fee is being spread among 25,000 students. Where you see higher numbers are generally at smaller schools. In terms of the revenue we generate at our youthful stage, when you look at Virginia Tech and Virginia, they have been doing it for 60 years, we are still young.”

Cox’s office did not return phone calls made by The Rotunda, but the delegate wrote an article published in the Richmond Times-Dispatch explaining the reasoning for the bill. “Only three percent of Virginia students play intercollegiate sports, but student fees fund approximately 69 percent of expenditures in athletic programs at Virginia’s four year schools,” said Cox in the article. “Mandatory fees unrelated to education represent one-third of total tuition and fees, or about $3,500 per year on average. This is an increase of 99 percent since 2003. In my view, we simply cannot ask students who will never play a minute of college sports to bear such a disproportionate share of the costs associated with these programs.”

Cox’s son Lane graduated from Longwood in 2014 and was not a student-athlete, so he has personally experienced paying large portions per year to the athletics department.

Though the bill could be fully passed later this month, Austin said they haven’t entirely put a plan in place to combat it. Instead, they are primarily focusing on how to lower reliance on student funds. “We haven’t jumped that far ahead, but we have already begun working on how to lower those fees as much as possible,” he said. “President Reveley has a keen eye for those finances and we have been working with Ken Copeland to figure out how those fees could be reduced.”

Reprinted from The Rotunda.