Students heading to open gym or fitness centres at the four polytechnic institutes across the province were faced with locked doors and a note, indicating the students and others are now no longer welcome to exercise or shoot hoops there.
A handful of staff at the locations were laid off and students were offered prorated refunds for their troubles, just no hoops, weights and basketballs.
This comes weeks after the University of Regina shuttered its nationally rated wrestling program and men’s volleyball, while Saskatchewan Polytechnic laid off and bought out an additional 42 staff, also a few weeks ago.
This is what it’s come to in Saskatchewan – we can’t afford to keep open the doors for the gyms and fitness centres for those going to our technical schools.
In addition to that, the sports teams for those schools — teams that basically only play tournaments against mostly just bible colleges — are now permanently removed.
As a cub sports reporter for the Moose Jaw Times-Herald, it was always a good call every year to talk to whomever the basketball or volleyball captain was to find out how they did at provincials. They’d pay their own way in a couple of vans and play a bunch of games in a stuffy old gym, walk out with a medal and we’d get a good story.
This wasn’t exactly the kind of activity that inspired many furrowed brows studying large-scale line items in the school’s budget, looking for things to deem unnecessary.
But, chop chop, children. Now, post-secondary students trying to stay in shape can try the High Street pothole dodge — the hottest new sport in Moose Jaw.
We’re being told that the schools will develop some kind of wellness plan in the interim, which is the kind of gobbledygook that happens when people cut first and deal with the effects afterward.
While the gyms here go dark and the intramural pinnies collect mould, it’s a stark contrast to what’s going on in Alberta.
The Northern and Southern Institutes of Technology are swimming along well in their fields. Grant McEwen College and Mount Royal College are now Grant McEwen University and Mount Royal University.
The athletic programs, ones I covered at Keyano College in Fort McMurray, are vibrant and involved heavily in recruiting in hockey, basketball and volleyball. Kids with Estevan connections are all over Medicine Hat and Red Deer.
Also, tuition has once again been frozen at that province’s universities, including the 2018-19 academic year.
If you’re a student potentially considering whether to stay here at Saskatchewan’s polytechnic schools or go to Keyano College, consider that one of these choices has a state of the art Sport and Wellness Centre, hosts national collegiate championships and has a strong reputation for academic programs related to energy, while the other option has padlocked its gyms.
Meanwhile in Saskatchewan, do you want to shoot hoops in the winter or run on a treadmill as a post-secondary student at the polytechnics? Do it on your own dime off-campus, bubbles.
The mind expands to find reasons why anyone in charge would think this was a good idea.
Whether it’s a long-term strategy to devalue the polytechnics to potentially completely privatize them or another even longer-term strategy to make sure the students are out of shape and will need more pharmaceuticals for health, I don’t know.
There just doesn’t seem to be anything resembling a strategy at play here no matter how you look at it.
With this kind of penny pinching for such miniscule expenses, do you see the bulk of Highway 39 getting twinned any time in our lifetime?
