This morning, members of the University at Buffalo men’s and women’s swimming and diving program came together for a sit-in outside university president Satish K. Tripathi’s office. UB recently announced that the men’s swimming & diving program would be cut to continue to fund other programs. Read more about the sit-in, as it happened, here.
SwimSwam got a chance to speak with senior swimmer Reid Zyniecki, who, along with fellow senior and teammate Nick Hooper, were the two swimmers who went in and discussed the situation with Tripathi as a result of the sit-in.
“It went exactly how we were hoping it to go,” said Zyniecki. “Our end goal was to speak with President Tripathi, and then from there to arrange a meeting between him and some of our alumni who are interested in coming up with a way to save the program.”
“Myself and another senior, Nick Hooper, did get to meet with President Tripathi, and in our meeting he did commit to meeting with our alums. I’m still skeptical about how much he’s willing to work with our alums, but it’s progress to talk with him directly outside of pre-written PR releases.”
According to Zyniecki, along with an article posted after the meeting by The Spectrum, alumni have come up with a plan for an endowment that will keep the men’s swimming and diving team alive. Ideally, this would work to funnel donor funds towards both athletic and non-athletic scholarships.
While Tripathi agreed to meet with alumni about the endowment plan and the program’s future, there is yet to be a set date for these talks to be had.
Jared Anderson contributed to this story.
Hunger strike would do the trick!