The Athletics Review Panel announced by university officials earlier this month will include two representatives from the Student Government Association as well as this year’s Mayor of Huntington Avenue, administrators said yesterday.
The panel, which met for the first time last night, is composed of 16 members who are charged with providing feedback on the current state of the Athletics Department.
On the selection of panelists, Athletics Director Peter Roby, in an interview yesterday, said university officials “tried to get some folks who had a football background, so people didn’t think we weren’t trying to hear all the voices from an alumni standpoint, as well as alums who are female or are involved in other parts of the university.”
Those invited to serve on the panel include: professors Sharon Bruns, James Fox, Meredith Harris and Bruce Wallin; undergraduates Jordan Clark, Missy Elumba, Joey Fiore and Marines Piney; alumni Michael Brodsky ’93, Carol Estes-Schwartz ’85, Brien Moriarty ’87 and Andrew Robertson ’90; administrators Ed Klotzbier ’87, Ronn’eacute; Turner and Jack Moynihan MPA ’93; College of Business Administration Dean Thomas Moore; faculty athletic representative Frederick Wiseman; and university governing board members Lloyd Mullin, Larry O’Rourke and Carole Shapazian, who will serve as moderator.
Roby said the goal for the group, whose deliberations will be kept confidential, will be to “understand the current status of athletics at Northeastern and how we compare with the cohort group that we compete against in our different conferences.”
In a Nov. 16 message posted on the myNEU portal, Roby said he has been conducting his own assessment and preparing recommendations for the future of the department, which he assumed direction of in July.
The formation of the panel came on the heels of a report last month by The News in which Roby indicated the possibility of eliminating an athletic program in an effort to realign his department’s financial resources.
The financial overhead associated with funding a football program has made the sport a target for speculation among Husky athletic fans.
Roby said he hopes the group will convene again before the holiday break. He is planning for a third meeting in January, with final recommendations expected to follow.
“Hopefully that will allow us to feel like we’ve answered questions, provided information and created a set of options and scenarios that might be worth considering on the part of the university,” he said.
Although Roby ultimately has the final word on the future of the department, he said he has not ruled anything out and is still open to suggestions.
“I have not made up my mind about what we want to do,” he said. “That’s the reason for wanting to have the review, to vet some of those ideas and see if we can solicit some other ideas that we may not have thought of.”
