<p>I stand corrected. After looking it up, Lafayette is the 7th smallest of 124 FCS division colleges (Wikepedia). That puts us in the smallest 6% of FCS schools in the country. (We are the smallest college in the Patriot League).</p>
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We used to play Army. There’s a reason we don’t play them any more. I attended a game at West Point in the early 1980’s as a member of the Lafayette band. We got crushed - and this was a time when we had a winning team and a QB (Frank Novak) who had made the cover of SI.</p>
<p>This is not the first time the issue of football’s status has come up. Maybe 10 years ago, football was not competitive and there was talk of dropping the sport or moving the college to D3. After much heated debate, D1 and football both remained, and enough money was donated to renovate the stadium AND build the Bourger Varsity building, which opened in 2007. I believe football is the ONLY sport at Lafayette that has its OWN building. My H (also a Lafayette alum) and I refer to it as the “you-can’t-cut-our-program” building.</p>
<p>After initially being very pleased with the selection of Dr Weiss to be Lafayette’s president, I’m not sure I’m such a big fan any more. He seems to want to re-make Lafayette into a true small LAC in the mold of Amherst, Williams or Colby. These are great colleges, but that is not who Lafayette IS. Lafayette has a unique identity, and needs to acknowledge and celebrate that. There are very few other schools its size with strong liberal arts, a strong and well-recognized engineering program, and D1 athletics. I’m all for Dr Weiss’s program to strengthen the fine arts, but I don’t feel the need to jettison other aspects of the college to do so. Also, while I admire his stance against the USNWR Rating system, it certainly hasn’t done the College any favors.</p>
<p>(This is off-track, but Dr Weiss also seems determined to go down the path of eliminating the Greek organizations. I would NEVER want to see a return to the old days where the frats pretty much ran the campus, but I believe that given Lafayette’s history, Greek life should remain as a viable alternative for those who choose it. The administrations attitude toward Greeks seems to me to be unrelentingly negative, but that is a discussion for another day). </p>
<p>I’ll be watching to see how all this turns out. I think it’s important to Lafayette’s image to remain a member of the Patriot League, and I think the school has too much self-respect to remain a member if we’re going to be a perennial doormat.</p>