Letter to the Editor - Northern should focus on academics, not football

Editor,

The university in our town does not have a full-time professor of physics, philosophy, foreign language, women’s studies, comparative religion or music. Less than 40 percent of the budget of Montana State University-Northern is spent on instruction, and more than half of the full-time employees of the university do not teach a single class.

For this coming semester, there are over 70 closed classes and lab sections. So what is the response of the university’s leadership to this crisis? Build a football stadium. Football, we are told, will stem the declining enrollment and send us to heaven in good time. It is hard to imagine a more ridiculous idea. A university does not exist to supply bread and circus via sports. A university exists to educate students for useful careers, to educate responsible citizens and to celebrate the ideals of truth and beauty. I urge my neighbors here in Havre to contact Commissioner Clayton Christian and Regent Paul Tuss and tell them that Northern needs to focus on academics, not football.

John Snider

Havre