Universities such as University of Utah, University of Oregon and Portland State University have all moved toward a “cost- based linear system” for tuition.  Boise State will soon follow in that trend.

A cost-based linear system means students will pay for each credit rather than paying a lump sum for full-time or part-time tuition.

Provost Martin Schimpf highlighted the importance of such a structure.

“In the past when the state of Idaho was paying 75 percent of the operating cost of the university, we could afford to have a lump sum cost,” Schimpf said. “We’ve grown without state funds and we feel that this is how we must accommodate for that growth.”

Currently, enrollment is increasing and so are the programs at Boise State, but funding from the state has decreased.  The growth of the university is underfunded without state assistance.

ASBSU President Ryan Gregg shared Schimpf’s opinion about the current model.

“The tuition system we have now really only makes sense if we have money coming in from the state,” Gregg said.

The transition is to occur over 5 to 6 years so as not to burden current students too much too quickly. This new system will be most impactful for students taking 12 to 17 credits where there used to be a plateau. Currently any credits between 12 and 17 are free.  Once the new system is in full effect, students will be charged for tuition and fees up to 12 credits and per credit tuition-only above 12 credits. The increase per credit over these 5 to 6 years is not set and is subject to change, although fees at Boise State will remain the lowest of the four-year public universities in Idaho.

Boise State’s president, Bob Kustra, explained in a press release how this new system will align the cost of education with its value.

“Linear fees will help the university deliver the courses our students need to graduate on time and allow us to better recruit and retain the best faculty members,” Kustra said.

For the 2013-2014 academic year, full-time resident students will pay $3,145 per semester, a 6.9 percent increase. Part-time residents will pay $260 per credit, a 3.2 percent increase. Full-time non-residents will pay $6,300 per semester, an increase of 10.1 percent. Full-time graduate students will pay $570 per semester on top of the full-time undergraduate tuition, a 4.7 percent increase. These increases are the first steps towards the “cost based linear system.”

Schimpf acknowledges that the increase will be rough for students.

“I think that if you are a full time student now, you are going to feel the impact of this in the fall. It is a pretty significant increase. That is unfortunate,” Schimpf said.

While the costs may be a bit steeper for students, there are benefits as well.

According to Schimpf, increasing tuition will allow Boise State to hire over a million dollars in full time faculty.  This will decrease the number of adjunct professors on campus and increase the number of full time lecturers.

Schimpf grinned as he said, “It’s been years since we’ve been able to hire that much faculty.”

Along with the ability to hire more faculty, the new system also aims to help cover the cost of increased enrollments in upper-division courses, and encourage students to complete courses for which they have registered and create a more equitable system. There would still be a refund period in which students can drop classes or receive incompletes.  However, the incentive to receive full credit in classes is higher since students will have paid for those specific credits.

“If we are going to need to bring in more revenue from students, we want it to be as fair as possible,” Schimpf said.

Gregg expressed that it is a necessary rise in cost and hopes that students will be able to understand that.

“The worst part is that it is a guaranteed increase over the next five years but it is a necessary one,” Gregg said. “I think that students in this economic climate will understand that we are going to have to increase how much we pay or what we get from the state is going to have to increase.”

The recent bombings in Boston have proven how valuable security cameras can be to law enforcement. Using footage obtained from nearby cameras, local and federal police forces were able to identify the brothers allegedly responsible for planting and detonating the explosives at the finish line of the marathon.

As a former FBI member, Boise State executive director of campus security Jon Uda understands how tools like video surveillance can aid law
enforcement.

Uda and colleagues have recently taken steps to install surveillance cameras campus wide in an attempt to prevent and prosecute crimes and prevent common illegal activity like bike theft.

Forced to deal with an annually shrinking budget, Uda must rely on grants since a centralized closed circuit television (CCTV) system could cost the university thousands of dollars it doesn’t have.

CCTV surveillance allows multiple camera feeds to be viewed in a single location by security personnel.

It is  commonly used among security professionals and law
enforcement.

“I am a huge proponent of CCTV,” Uda said. “If I had a million dollars, I would have installed cameras two years ago.”

Boise State’s campus is unique for its lack of video cameras, compared to other state schools like Idaho State University which has nearly 400, according
to Uda.

Currently, a third party group is being selected by Boise State security officials to conduct an evaluation of campus security efforts and Uda hopes their findings will indicate a need for an integrated camera network.

Without a recommendation from an independent third party, Uda will not be able to obtain grant money necessary for a school wide CCTV
system.

Cameras conduct surveillance near cash registers and campus businesses, but most outdoor areas are are not monitored
via CCTV.

“We do have cameras, most are in cash collection areas, but they are inside of buildings,” said Rob Littrell, Boise State Emergency Planner and Analyst.

Though cameras may aid authorities and prevent theft, ASBSU President Ryan Gregg thinks most students would not like to be monitored.

“What was reported back to the (ASBSU) senate is that students on campus have sort of a certain level of privacy they expect and students weren’t comfortable having cameras everywhere,” Gregg said.

Gregg said he feels the effectiveness of camera surveillance should be studied before any serious changes are made.

With the population size of student residents on campus increasing each year, Gregg sees illegal activity decreasing.

“I tend to think that as we have more students on campus, that it actually would deter crime,” Gregg said. “If you are a criminal, you don’t want to be caught, you want to do your crime when there are few people around.”

Lack of security cameras in high traffic areas like the Lincoln Parking Garage have created difficulty for police trying to solve the recent arson crimes involving burning trash cans and the destruction of two student vehicles.

Freshman health promotions major Taylor Lance understands the need for cameras covering outdoor high traffic areas on campus but stressed that school officials should restrict additional surveillance to those areas.

“I think the quad and big areas like that would be fine,” Lance said.

Students like civil engineer major Randy Hamilton feel criminals will only be deterred by enhanced security measures if they are in plain sight.

“If they’re visible, and they are made aware that there are new cameras then maybe,” Hamilton said. “But if people don’t know you added 20 cameras then they are going to do the same stuff.”

“I’m a 34-year-old NBA center. I’m black. And I’m gay.”

The news from Jason Collins shook the world Monday morning. Shook it so hard that the Twitter birds were stumbling over themselves to get out of their nests. Within 10 minutes of being posted on the Sports Illustrated website, the article had over 800 comments and Jason Collins was a trending topic.

Collins, who just finished his twelfth season in the NBA, became the first active male player to be openly gay in any of the four major American sports. Yet two weeks ago on April 18, when the number one WNBA draft pick Brittney Griner came out as lesbian, there was hardly a ripple.

Are expectations different for men and women in sports? Whereas Griner had practically been labeled a lesbian already, many assumed Collins to be the perfect example of a virile, heterosexual man. People often worry that looking up to athletes affects the way we look at alcohol, safe sex and drug use. However, less attention is paid to how sports reinforce strict gender roles.

Matthew Genuchi, a professor of psychology at Boise State, with research focusing on men and masculinity, calls American sports “a traditional environment of hyper-masculinity.”

According to Genuchi, male sports value such norms as dominance, assertiveness, non-intimacy, power and competition. Athletics became a way for men to showcase these characteristics.

“Sports historically was seen as a male preserve,” said Shelley Lucas, Ph.D., a professor of kinesiology at Boise State. “This is something that boys and men do to learn about, prove and demonstrate their masculinity,”

Collins’ coming out is one of the most recent and significant challenges to some of these traditional notions.

“People who care about these kind of things are hopeful that this is going to open the door to more active athletes coming out and being more comfortable,” Lucas said.

Challenges to gender norms

The current state of gender norms in sports may be in flux. After February’s NFL Scouting Combine, both Manti Te’o of Notre Dame and Nick Kasa of the University of Colorado reported teams asked them questions pertaining to their sexuality. These questions would be illegal in nearly any other job interview.

MLB, the NBA and the NHL have started fining for homophobic slurs used during games. However, slurs are still being used. The NFL has never reprimanded a player for using slurs.

“They’re very invested in presenting a certain style of hyper-masculinity: violence on the playing field, but we also see it off, big, powerful musculature, it’s about brute force, it’s about domination,” Lucas said. “The sports culture of hockey, baseball, basketball, the NFL, seem to have a lot riding on that particular view of masculinity.”

But there are signs of change as well. NFL players Chris Kluwe and Brendon Ayanbadejo have filed a lawsuit against the NFL. Their brief states, “For far too long, professional sports have been a bastion of bigotry, intolerance and small-minded prejudice toward sexual orientation.”

Recently, several retired players, athletes in foreign leagues and female athletes have come out. There has also been an increase in activism among players who are straight allies.

“I think in the United States there has been a shift in that there is more openness and acceptance of nontraditional masculine norms,” Genuchi said. “But … I think these predominant norms still exist and still have an impact on men.”

Even Collins discussed this in his announcement: “But I’ve always been an aggressive player, even in high school. Am I so physical to prove that being gay doesn’t make you soft?”

As free agent this summer, it is not known where or if Collins will play again. While it is almost certain he will not be the last openly gay athlete in American sports, the dominant culture of hyper-masculinity has not ended.

“I don’t imagine that just one person coming out is just going to erase all the homophobia that is out there,” Lucas said. “It’s going to be interesting to see how teams and sponsors and people who speak up, who are silent. Because that will be saying something as well.”

What this means for women

Sports have been equated with masculinity for a long time. Because of this it seems unnatural for women to possess these characteristics and have an interest in displaying them.

Lucas noted that working class women and women of color were always physical in their labor. The idea that it is improper for women to sweat and be physical came out of white, middle class society. However, these views still affect perceptions of gender in American sports today.

Women have made great strides since Title IX was passed in 1972. The number of women participating in sports has increased tenfold, and women have found some space in a traditional male sphere.

But that has created other challenges. If a woman is too aggressive or athletic she may be considered “mannish” or assumed to be a lesbian.

“I like to call it this idea of sport-induced lesbianism,” Lucas said. “For women, sport becomes a way to raise suspicion that you’re a lesbian.”

In today’s society there are sports that women can play with little to no question, Lucas suggested.

“Women who are in gymnastics and tennis and swimming, figure skating—they’re meeting the cultural expectations of what a woman is,” Lucas said.

The number of girls and young women playing sports have helped push this change into the cultural space.

“There still is a pretty strong gender stereotype about who’s expected to play sports and what is normal. Although that certainly is changing,” Lucas said. “We see tons of little girls out there playing sports. I think that has helped with changing some of those gender roles.”

How children are affected

Children learn perceptions through role models and examples. Many youth, especially adolescents, are drawn to athletes when looking for these role models.

“It shapes who they (children) are and what they think is within the parameters of acceptable behavior,” Lucas said.

The Kaiser Family Foundation conducted a study that showed 93 percent of youth between the ages of 10 and 17 who participated in at least one sport considered a professional athlete to be a role model. That is higher than the number of kids who listed their parents.

“We look to other people for how we should be,” said Kimberly McAdams, Ph.D., another professor of psychology at Boise State. “We focus on people who are powerful and attractive because of course we want to be those things ourselves.”

For young men especially, the hyper-masculine culture starts long before the professional and college level. From a young age they are taught to represent one cultural norm.

“One message young men and boys are learning: Don’t do feminine things,” Genuchi said. “An implied part of that is we don’t talk about homosexuality. Male athletes don’t talk about it.”

That can make finding space of acceptance hard for young, gay athletes, who have been watching for signs of acceptance. In recent years, NBA players have been fined for using homophobic slurs on the court, Lucas noted.

“Role models can just as easily inspire bad behavior as good,” McAdams said. “It’s all about the perceptions we hold. If that person seems like someone we want to be like, we emulate them no matter what.”

In that at least Collins has offered a small ray of hope to other gay athletes: that they aren’t alone.

“I think he’s a great role model for athletes who want to come out, telling his story the way he does,” Lucas said. “For younger athletes, that’s especially important.”

In his announcement, Collins revealed his reasons for coming out. He said he wanted to tell his story after watching a friend march in a 2012 gay pride parade, sitting in his apartment less than three miles from where the Supreme Court was hearing arguments about gay marriage, and being instilled with a sense of mortality by the bombing at the Boston Marathon.

Collins also explained that he wears number 98 as a silent statement in remembrance of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student in Wyoming who was kidnapped, tortured and hung on a barbed wire fence in 1998. It was his one gesture of solidarity.

“I want to do the right thing and not hide anymore,” Collins wrote. “I want to march for tolerance, acceptance and understanding. I want to take a stand and say, ‘Me, too.’ ”

The Boise State’s Talkin’ Broncos have won the National Title for the past two consecutive championships. Though  the Speech and Debate Team has had much success, students get much more from the program than just winning.

“In five years when most people are asked about college they will answer ‘I went to Boise State University.’ In five years when someone asks me where I went to college I will answer ‘I did forensics at Boise State University,’” said Howie Long, a three-year-member of the Speech and Debate Team.

“It’s not where you went to college necessarily; it’s what you did in college,” Long said.

The Pi Kappa Delta Speech and Debate National Championship is a biennial event- meaning it occurs every two years. The Talkin’ Broncos Team that won the championship three years ago does not have the benefit of continuity—few of the members that won that year are with the
team now.

“We went into this year knowing that we are graduating ten people, we also had eight people coming in. All the seniors knew that we had to prepare the incoming freshman for the next four years,” said Josh Watkins, a senior at Boise State.

Speech and Debate tournaments can be grueling; students spend three to five days in different cities and compete in many different categories of debates and speeches that can last for hours.

“In speech and debate everything has a rhythm, you don’t want to push yourself too hard—you match your practice to your performance,” said Manda Hicks, the director of Forensics at Boise State.

This season, of the seven events the Talkin’ Broncos have competed in they have won six; including the Pi Kappa Delta Speech and Debate National Championship. The victory was a cumulative effort by the entire Boise State Team, there were twenty-four events total and Boise State‘s score was the highest of all. In any event, preparation is key.

“Monica Cutler told me every night that she practiced in front of the mirror for an hour for two speeches; a half hour each and the speeches are ten minutes so she would do both speeches three times so she can watch her facial expressions, her body movement, and to make sure she doesn’t have those nervous twitches, and Monica has the results to prove that,” Long said in regards to his fellow competitor.

Before each event, 20-60 hours of preparation are required in order to properly compete. Many students compete in eight or more events.

“I practiced mine for a half hour each night, so there’s a serious time commitment going into this. Plus, you have to stay up on the news and all your topics from the war in Syria to the drones flying overhead domestically,” Long said.

Though consecutive championships speak for themselves, the one clear thing about Boise State’s Speech and Debate Team is what students get beyond the awards and the accolades.

“Speech and Debate has helped me in my social life, also, if it weren’t for Speech and Debate I feel like I would struggle a lot more with my course-work,” said freshman Fred Swanstrum.

There is plenty to be learnt from the Speech and Debate program, students extract the most they can from the Talkin’ Broncos.

“Speech and Debate have absolutely been a huge foundation for my college experience. For example, I’m going to graduate school in London and I don’t believe that I would have gotten in if I didn’t have the skills instilled from Speech and Debate, like how to effectively communicate or how to organize thoughts. The things I learned from speech and debate bleed into my other classes,” Watkins said.

Students are able to reap a number of rewards from involvement in speech and debate. These students can use the experience as an extra resume boost and can use the speaking skills for the rest of their lives.

“Forensics gives you that extra, it gives you memories, if you don’t get involved in something in college you’re not going to get those memories,” Long said.

The students who are a part of this program have all made one thing clear: that Speech and Debate has defined their college experience for the better.

The idea came to Mark Rudin, Vice President for Research and Economic Development, one night when he ran into senior art student Marshall Sinclair at a metal pouring event. Sinclair talked about his desire to open a foundry, a workshop for casting metal, in Boise after graduation.

Boise State, through the Office of University and Industry Ventures, has long offered services to their faculty to help them market and commercialize their ideas. However after his talk with Sinclair, Rudin questioned why they weren’t offering this opportunity to students as well.

“We provide that service to our faculty but there may be as much if not more, I tend to think more, innovation occurring with the students,” Rudin said.

What is Venture College? 

Venture College is a new program that will enter it’s pilot year in fall 2013.   The name may seem misleading, but Venture College is not an academic program.  Students who participate do not receive credits toward their degree. Rather Venture College is an extracurricular activity for students that want to open their own business or start a nonprofit.

“They’ll (students) get kind of an abbreviated, but very intense, business education,” Zimmer said.

“It’s an extra activity to help you pursue your dream of starting up your own business,” Rudin said.  

Venture College welcomes students from all majors. While business students are welcome and encouraged to apply, Venture College enthusiastically welcomes students from all majors.

“I think there has been a paradigm at a university that innovation, that starting a business, is for business students,” said Rudin. “One of our tenets of Venture College is that innovation occurs in all fields.”

Ed Zimmer, retired CEO of ECCO group who has been hired as Executive in Residence for the research department  and will serve as Associate Director of Venture College, seconded this thought. 

“There are a whole lot of people that have to have jobs… and generally business is going to be related to most of them,”Zimmer said. “This is a way to put some business educational opportunities to students who aren’t business majors.”

The most famous example of product commercialization from a university is Gatorade which was created at the University of Florida. Similarly the goal of Venture College is to provide student with the resources to market their own idea.

“(Gatorade) is kind of the grandfather of all examples,” Zimmer said. “I don’t know if we have a Gatorade here but there are a lot of great ideas.”

How does Venture College Work?

The Venture College will be overseen by what is called the “Board of Angels.” Zimmer will serve as the chair of this board. 

In business the term angel means someone who provides startup funding. It is different from a venture capitalist. An angel is someone who provides a first, small sum of money to get the idea off the ground to the point where venture capitalists might be interested.

“When we’re talking about our group of advisors being angel advisors that’s the intention,” Zimmer said. “We want to get these seeds of business planted and sprouting so they can get farther… they can get funded in some other way.” 

Venture College will be based of  Boise State’s new space downtown in the Collier Building. Being downtown in the heart of Boise Business is one of the strengths of the program.

Students who are participating in Venture College will for a two hour session every week. Beyond that involved students are welcome to put as much time into Venture College as they chose. 

The strategy will be two fold. The Board of Angels and other community members will discuss what Zimmer calls “common gaps” in the students’ education. These may include any number of topics from accounting to cash to market analysis. 

Beyond that each student will receive a specialized focus for their plan.

As of now there are 245 “friends of the venture college.” These are members of the business community and entrepreneurs in Boise that have agreed to support Venture College. Members will be put into contact and given network opportunities with these individuals giving them real world insight.

It is the willingness of these business professional to participate that makes Venture College possible.

“The relationship between Boise and Boise State creates a synergy that allows us to do Venture College,” Rudin said. “There aren’t a lot of other university/city relationships, this intimate, that would facilitate a Venture College type of relationship.”

At the end of the program participants have an opportunity to pitch a business plan to the board. Through this pitch they could potentially be given funds to further their vision.

“Someone may get a grant from the pool to develop a product. Or to hire resources to take their idea to the next step. Or to take a trip to meet with people in this industry. It could be for product development… the students could get a few thousand dollars, or more than a few thousand dollars,” Zimmer said.

However this money is not guaranteed just because someone participated in Venture College. 

“The students are going to compete for this,” Rudin said. “They’re not all going to get the same. It’s going to be real world.” 

How to get involved with Venture College

Venture College has already accepted all their applications for fall. However, they will be accepting 15 new applicants for spring semester.

Any student who wants to apply is welcome. The only requirements are that students be full-time in a degree seeking program.

Students who want to apply can find more information on the Boise State website. Having the extra time to prepare might not be such a bad thing. Applicants for fall are currently undergoing a stringent interviewing process.

“Nobody’s left bleeding… yet,” Zimmer quipped.

All jokes aside Zimmer and his cohort of angels have seen a lot of promise from some of the candidates. One interviewee’s car broke down at The Depot the morning of her interview and she ran, in heels, all the way to the Collier building at 301 Capitol Blvd. She was on time for her interview.

“There’s initiative,” said Zimmer. “Talk about passion.”