To the editor:

In the midst of the furor over the recent ticket scandal, I would like to remind your readers of an earlier breach of ethics by Kansas Athletics, Inc.

During Bob Frederick’s administration, our family and others made significant contributions to secure what were then lifetime seats in Allen Fieldhouse. We wished to keep the same seats that had been held by my late father since the fieldhouse first opened.

There was no bargaining; trustingly we contributed what was asked for by the Athletic Department in written correspondence. But then came the Hemenway-Perkins regime and the reseating of the fieldhouse through the point system. Past agreements for seating were disregarded. In spite of the contributions and years of service across generations, our seats and those of others were taken away, ostensibly to be given to larger, now more worthy, contributors. Our family’s request that our contribution be diverted to the Spencer and Natural History museums was denied by the athletic director himself.

Now we learn that our seats may not have been given to a larger contributor after all. They may have been stripped away to be clandestinely sold to a ticket broker!

Sadly the university as a whole has been damaged. The estimated loss of $3 million doesn’t begin to account for the loss of goodwill and future contributions from disaffected alumni such as ourselves. Can KU’s integrity ever be regained? Or do we have to wait for the passing of an entire generation?