Dear Chancellor May and Provost Croughan,
We were quite surprised to read in the Davis Enterprise about the proposed elimination of the Physical Education Program. There are three aspects to this that give pause.
First, many thousands of students participate in PE each year. One might have thought there would be a larger degree of engagement with the campus community concerning this decision and its consequences. Besides consulting with those who would be most affected, the students, there is also the fact that the Academic Senate has formal authority in decisions of this nature.
Second, the benefits of physical activity are well proven, for stress relief, overall health, and learning new skills. The mind-body is a complete system: disregarding the rest of the body inhibits memory, mood, and learning. Eliminating PE seems starkly at variance with one of the strategic goals of the recently announced “Healthy UC Davis” initiative: “Providing UC Davis community members with support, opportunity, information and tools to engage in healthy behaviors.”
There are many students who, for one reason or another, have grown up without the opportunity for much learning and participation in sports broadly defined. Elimination of PE unfairly singles out these, typically less wealthy, students who, for example, are not able to afford a membership and lessons at a golf club, but who can, in a UCD PE class, learn under the tutelage of a Cy Williams. PE courses offer all our students the opportunity to learn, at no cost, new skills as a beginner, and from talented and outstanding instructors.
Third, and finally, we need not remind you of our nation’s recent descent into fragmentation and division. Many majors on campus are profoundly segregated by race and by gender. PE classes offer our students a unique opportunity to make friends and interact across lines of race, religious belief, and sexual orientation. Sharing the experience of spotting a partner’s bench press, or giving an assist in a basketball game, reminds our students how arbitrary categories are irrelevant to the process of working together.
The Executive Board of
The Davis Faculty Association