The errors and omissions in your recent story about Memorial Stadium and the Endowment Seating Program begin in the headline and continue throughout the body of what is a misleading article.
The headline described ESP’s finances as “empty coffers.” This is wording that is both dramatic and false. In fact, cash received to date by the ESP program exceeds $40 million, and the value of seats sold exceeds $140 million. I wish all of our coffers were that “empty”! This information was provided to the reporter and has been online for weeks at calbears.com.
The story also failed to mention that as a result of ESP sales to date, Cal Athletics’ ability to service the debt has been secured for at least the next 20 years. In short, the coffers may not be as full as we would like, but they are far from being empty, and we have plenty of time to get them filled.
The description of recent ESP sales trends also omits key information provided to the reporter. To put it bluntly, there has been no decline in seats sold. Again, the information is all there on the Cal Athletics site:
“The fourth-quarter report for the Endowment Seating Program (ESP) shows 1,745 seats sold as of June 30, 2012, with an additional 131 seat pledges in progress. Between the close of the fiscal year and the posting of this report on Sept. 10, 2012, 71 of those 131 seats have been finalized, while 28 of the remaining 60 seats in progress belong to one account that is modifying its contract by one seat. Total cash received is $40,739,318, an increase of $5.5 million since the end of the third quarter on March 31, 2012. For the entire fiscal year, 201 new seats were sold within the ESP sections, and more than 15 accounts chose to upgrade their seats to a higher club level, resulting in a corresponding increase in commitment to the program.”
It may not have been intentional, but this news story simply advances a particular point of view by ignoring established points of fact. The campus community deserves better, and we will be submitting to the Daily Cal a detailed, factual account of where we are in terms of the stadium’s finances and all that is being done to honor our commitment to avoid the use of campus funds for servicing and repayment of the debt.
— Dan Mogulof,
UC Berkeley executive director of the Office of Public Affairs
Contact the opinion desk at [email protected]
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Oh, so the coffers aren’t empty, and we actually have 1/8 of the needed funds. Good to know.
I’m sure the people who have been laid off as the University assumed another multi-million dollar debt will be comforted by the knowledge.
Seriously DC, half truths now?
Ignore the university spinmeister, and check out the facts on the stadium fiasco as verified by the Wall Street Journal:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304432704577350214257041598.html
Don’t forget to read the correction on that WSJ article. Apparently Barsky didn’t tell them the full story either. They had to publish their second-largest correction ever.
Guest, that is more nonsense. Articles often have corrections and that correction didn’t make a difference for the key facts in the WSJ article which were perfectly correct.
Every couple months, the Daily Cal runs an article quoting Brian Barsky that people are “reneging” on seat purchases or that athletics will run a $20 million deficit or whatever. Then, a couple days later, it turns out that the facts in that article were incomplete. Somehow the reporter didn’t get told the whole story when Barsky called them up to pitch the article, and a correction is needed.
Even the Wall Street Journal got caught in that. Apparently he gave them the wrong value for the stadium loan, nor did he mention the commitments for the rest of the money (which is coming in, as the Daily Cal article showed). That’s what caused the correction.
So doubt the numbers from the University if you’d like, but at least understand the numbers that Barsky is pushing have been demonstrated to be incomplete and misleading by that Wall Street Journal article and yesterday’s Daily Cal article.
In this case, Barsky somehow knows that people “reneged” on purchases. That’s critical to his argument, which is that Berkeley should not project ANY future revenue toward the stadium finances unless it has enforceable contracts. He harps on how people can stop paying for their seats, and “renege” is part of that language. (He apparently doesn’t accept the argument that seat sales are an ongoing thing, and it’s reasonable to expect that people might buy more seats over the next 30 years) I think the Daily Cal should ask him to back that “renege” up, though, because there’s no evidence for it in the report, nor in the financial numbers from athletics.
The numbers from athletics shows that the value of seats sold is $140 million, down from $145 million the previous quarter. Barsky’s right.
You do know that “exceeds” and “is” mean different things, right?
Angie, the exact numbers from athletics shows that the value of seats sold is $140,550,000, down from $145,640,000. The drop “exceeds” $5 million.
The primary reason for the “drop” in the value of seats sold is the fact that one family decided to reduce their order from 29 to 28 seats between reporting periods, meaning the university has to count the seats as unsold until the new contract is completed. Beyond that a grand total of eight buyers dropped out of the program. Of those eight, two passed away and another suffered a debilitating stroke. I’m not sure how their families will feel when they hear allegations that they “reneged” on a commitment.
Since the number of seats dropped by 51, did the other 15 donors suffer other debilitating ailments when they had to watch how Cal couldn’t score one lousy touchdown in the Big Game?
Barsky did not pitch the story to The Daily Cal. The reporter contacted him.
- Sarah Burns, University News Editor
The WSJ correction was just like this spinmeister letter to the editor – a sad attempt at spin control after an article exposes the truth.
wait, so the facts that you can verify 100% by going to the AD’s office and examining them with your own eyes are not correct, but the “facts” that WSJ obtained from a 2nd party source (thereby making it a 3rd party source) are correct? “facts” they later retracted? damn, UC needs to tighten up admissions criteria, what a shame that they let you in there. why don’t you go verify it yourself instead of working with your bias?
Guest2 is a spinmeister. If you read the WSJ article it says it got its information from official university sources. There was no retraction of facts, just a minor correction which had nothing to do with the main facts.