With our current economic situation and the state of Illinois owing Eastern around $13 million, Eastern students have demonstrated concern with putting athletics over education.

Eastern’s athletic director, Barbara Burke, has received a lot of heat for unveiling her plan for the construction of new athletic facilities on the East side of campus.

Burke was unavailable for comment.

It may have been completely bad timing on her part but according to Vice President William Weber, he said, “Most, if not all, of this would have to be achieved by donations or non-appropriated funds.”

Eastern athletics actually only receives roughly $10 million per fiscal year, Weber said.

In fact, Weber said that from the $233 million Eastern receives in funds, 61.2 percent of it goes to academics.

“So, we’re talking about something much bigger than athletics,” Weber said. “They have great ideas, but they’re actually not building anything yet. They’re hoping to raise funds to pursue some of these ideas.”

Weber said Eastern did not have enough money to pay for that sort of thing and the athletic department is working on finding donors to find a way to build their “master plan.”

According to a previous article in The Daily Eastern News, Burke said the facilities would be very flexible, that the money would depend on donor’s wishes, and that the proposed renovations could change as time progressed.

Harrison Bueno can be reached at 581-7942 or at hbueno@eiu.edu.