There's nothing like a bureaucracy blindly enforcing a policy to warm the cockles of one's heart.
What else explains the manager of the University of New Mexico's Johnson Center, Roger Wrolstad, taking it upon himself to evict a wheelchair basketball team that's been practicing there for 20-some years? While the Albuquerque Kings usually are alone when they play on Saturdays, well, some students might suddenly decide it's time to shoot some hoops and fill up Johnson Center's seven other courts.
It could happen. It apparently hasn't in the past 20 years, but it could.
Wrolstad says it's not about the money — though the Kings are paying $500 a year when other teams pay around $2,000 for 10 Saturdays. It's apparently about enforcing a policy that requires non-UNM groups “conduct their event outside of the center's normal operating hours.” Even when no students want to use it during the normal operating hours while taxpayers are keeping the lights and heat or A/C on.
Wrolstad says whether or not students are using the courts is irrelevant. The Albuquerque Kings and their wheelchairs are tying up a court that is meant for students, a court that's “there for the students if they want to use it.” He says “I've got to treat everybody the same. ... They've gotten a lot better treatment, and it's not fair to anybody else.”
Not fair to whom, exactly? The throngs of basketball-playing students who aren't lined up outside Johnson Center at noon on Saturdays?
Unless UNM and the team can reach a compromise, players will be without a court when the semester ends. John Block III, interim director of the Governor's Commission on Disability, says “it would be great for the community and the good will of UNM to continue” providing a place for the Kings to practice.
And it would be great if UNM called a time out on finding solutions in search of problems.
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