A successful athletics program helps to bring in out of state students needed to compete in our privatized society. We can see how this connects to the "Party Pathway" discussed by Elizabeth Armstrong and Laura Hamilton in "Paying for the Party: How Colleges Maintain Inequality". She explains "Building the social side of the party pathway involves creating big-time sports teams and facilities, as well as other "recreational" aspects of student life...Most centrally, it requires solving the puzzle of how to systematically, and in large-scale fashion, generate 'fun.' " (Armstrong and Hamilton 15) A football game at a perennial power can turn an entire Fall Saturday into a giant party, attracting thousands of people and hopefully students to the fun they can be having, essentially serving as a living advertisement for the school.
No comments:
Post a Comment