Staff editorial: Un-amused

A few years ago the university was ranked one of the top 20 ugliest colleges in the country by CampusSqueeze.com. This badge of shame had far less to do with the university’s Georgian architecture as it did with the surrounding area. With congested traffic and decrepit liquor stores, College Park is far from paradise. However, if university officials get their way, things could get much worse.

Currently, the university and the University System of Maryland are questioning whether a Maryland Court of Special Appeals ruling in June, which exempted Johns Hopkins University lacrosse games from Baltimore admissions and amusement taxes, could be applied to this university. Such a ruling would exempt the university from as much as $550,000 in annual city taxes. If the court agrees, then the city of College Park would only receive $5,000 from the university a year, according to District 2 Councilman Bob Catlin, depriving the city of much-needed revenue at a time when municipalities are struggling in the grips of a recession.

Although we generally support efforts by university officials to save hundreds of thousands of dollars, trying to become exempt from the amusement tax would be insulting to the city and short-sighted.

There’s a chance they would lose the case. State law says admissions and amusement tax may not be imposed on the gross receipts if they are used exclusively for education purposes. The fact of the matter is that most of the money made from athletic events goes right back to the Athletics Department, not a general university fund like at Johns Hopkins.

Some factors the court considered in making their decision were that all students at Johns Hopkins are required to take a physical education course, more than 50 percent of the student body participates in some type of athletics and the university-owned athletic field is available to the community as well as students for use. Anyone who has ever tried to get a game of two-hand touch going in an empty Byrd Stadium knows this isn’t the case here. If the university plans to argue such, then serious changes must be made to how the Athletics Department operates.

Despite these discrepancies, there is a broader moral factor to this situation. The university does not live in a bubble. The ability of College Park to function directly affects the university and students’ lives. It must not be forgotten that city taxpayers spend thousands each year on services that protect students, manage traffic after games and keep College Park functioning.

The city still has far to go, and progress would be dramatically hindered if more than half a million dollars was reduced from the city’s revenue.

Some members of the city council have been hostile toward the university, describing it as a “gorilla.” But this hostility is bred by such self-interested and duplicitous behavior on the university’s part. If the university does find a way to exempt itself from these taxes, the council should challenge the decision in the state’s Court of Appeals.

No prospective student or faculty member wants to come to a university surrounded by crime and disorder. To block room for improvement would be reckless to current students’ well-being as well as to the future of the university. Before university officials attempt to cut more than half a million dollars from the city’s revenue, they should remember that the city that whizzes by their windows during their evening commute is called home by thousands of students. And while it may not be paradise, it’s far from Skid Row. Let’s keep it that way.