Letter to the Editor: An institution can collect, it cannot keep

You cannot command the wind. You can only set the sail. Every American university now sails into the same storm. Fewer college-age students each year. State support that erodes structurally, not in passing cycles. Artificial intelligence unsettling the worth of a degree. Forecasters expect dozens of institutions to close before the decade ends. This is not a rough patch. It is a change in the climate.

Athletics feels the squeeze first, because it is funded by the very institution bracing against that storm. And in Flagstaff the strain is now visible. Twenty years: four presidents, six athletic directors counting the interim, now searching for the seventh. A finish of ninth out of ten in our conference for donor support. Alumni who gave their bodies to this program and feel, today, unheard.