Out!

How Indiana State University’s Baseball Team Ignite Change from Management Up

EDITOR’S NOTE

This article about the Indiana State University baseball team’s chaotic happenings while they made a run to the NCAA Baseball Tournament only to get ruined by university greed, is in my opinion, the best newsletter story I wrote this year.

This story was published on LinkedIn on July 9, 2023, but still holds about many colleges to this day.

This article dives through greed which ultimately destroyed the reputation of a school and their president’s actions to end the promising postseason and chance of a baseball team and the city experiencing a miracle only to have those dreams dashed.

Since writing this article, in October, the President of Indiana State will be retiring from her position after 38 years in higher education. This is as the university is falling apart with the highest Indiana state tuition rates, a decreased student population, and a fused reputation from the general public.

An online group of academics and scholars called for her resignation for years, but it took one small-town college baseball team to send a message to the world about the management and disfunction which was Dr. Deborah Curtis and the falling reputation of Indiana State University.

This article has also been edited for quality purposes.

I need to give a special shoutout to Sohelia Strunk for helping me interview you and edit this article.

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Introduction: A Starry Night on the Wabash

It started as a story on a starry night at the Banks of the Wabash as Terre Haute’s homegrown college baseball program, the Indiana State Sycamores jumped around the baseball field, fireworks glowing and fans cheering and hugging each other and embracing the most joy this community has felt in decades.

Fireworks glowing through the Wabash sky, fans screaming in blue and white, players dog-piling onto the field embracing their brothers on this field for their first trip to destiny since 1986, and coaches embracing one more hug.

All of this before the Indiana State Sycamores were preparing to play in a style of the NFL’s AFC Championship at home versus the TCU Horned Frogs as the Terre Haute community celebrated this historic accomplishment of making it to the 2023 Men’s College World Series and fulfilling every possible destiny to get there.

The team finished with their best record in decades, hosted their first NCAA Regionals Baseball Tournament since the Sycamore’s stadium first opened, and their coach along with a strong defense carried through this team on this night to advance to the Super Regionals after beating the Iowa Hawkeyes, 11–8 on this starry night in Terre Haute.

An economic boost created drove alumni and staff to want and celebrate this team’s accomplishments at a stadium many thought was, “… supposed to host a Super Regionals,” according to a WTHI Channel 10 Interview with a former baseball player two days after the unthinkable would occur.

On the night of June 5, 2023, under the twilights of stargazing at the Wabash River and thinking of blue and white dancing in Terre Haute one more time, the Indiana State Athletics Department stated their social media feed at around 6:45 pm that still shakes many to their core.

The issue, which had been seen on Twitter over three million times, excused the idea of hosting a Super Regionals game because the Special Olympics of Indiana, which the university has proudly hosted the event for over 50 years, was going to replace the TCU/ISU Super Regionals matchup that weekend at the grounds of Bob Warn Field, the home of the team.

The official workforce would have been cut if they hosted both, and the facility and its amenities would be heavily strained, according to the post. To wrap it all up let’s just say… people like me were beyond frustrated.

Texas Christian University felt so bad for the Indiana State team, that they pitched in millions of dollars to help support the Special Olympics of Indiana that weekend.

Indiana State, in short, was not going to host the Super Regionals no matter what TCU tried to advocate for as the tournament would be held in Fort Worth, not at home.

Fans both nationally and in the state were left abandoned after being baited away from progress. This change could have put a rebirth onto ISU baseball and even athletics. It could have expanded infrastructure, built new facilities, and provided funding for marketing and progress to help the university and its campus. Instead, greed and disability ruined the very precious bit of progress Indiana State could have made to rebuild and regrow its program.

Controversy hovered over the Terre Haute regions as Indiana State President, Dr. Deborah Curtis, and her presidency were finally put under the microscope.

After the Super Regionals, many former staff at Indiana State viewed this as not a surprise coming out of President Curtis’ questionable practices while being the university president as many in the Sycamore community who were already fed up with her practices became more fed up with the process.

This started the website Save Indiana State dot com, along with the Facebook group “No Confidence in Deborah Curtis,” a week after ISU Athletics announced the beginning of a Fort Worth Super Regionals game.

As for the baseball team… in the Super Regionals, the Sycamores lost in a straight 2–0 set to TCU as the Horned Frogs advanced to Omaha to play in the College World Series.

A dream dashed in the blink of an eye all because of corporate greed.

This story has much more than just a baseball component. This also has a more dynamic importance in how American colleges are run in the modern day and how one business owner should not tank an already unstable company.

PART II: The President

President Dr. Deborah Curtis was assigned as Indiana State’s 12th university President in the last ten years as the eleventh school president, Daniel J. Bradley, stepped down from the roll in January 2018 according to the Indiana Statesman, ISU’s newspaper, and media company.

Just like the hiring of Indiana University’s current President, Pamala Whitten in the fall of 2021, Curtis became the first female President in Sycamore’s history as she not only had familiar qualities that could match the area very well.

Before being the school’s President, she last worked in the Midwest at the University of Central Missouri where she acted as the school’s provost, and at Illinois State University she acted as the dean of the College of Education from 2006–2012 and as the director of the Lauby Teacher Education Center and Clinical Experiences and Certification Processes from 2001–2005 according to her biography on the ISU Admissions page.

In addition, according to the ISU Admission website, Dr. Curtis also received her Ph.D. from Indiana State “… in curriculum and instruction with specializations in secondary education and supervision of instruction. She holds a master’s degree in music education from the University of Illinois and a bachelor’s degree in music education from MacMurray College [in Jacksonville, Ill. Which closed in March 2020].”

She worked at Illinois State for 26 years and was familiar with the Sycamore area as many seemed confident about being one of the only female college presidents in the state of Indiana at a time of dynamic female empowerment many have seen at Indiana University Bloomington with President Pamela Whitten, coach Teri Moran, and the Indiana Hoosiers women’s basketball team sparking a plug into how Indiana colleges are embracing female empowerment today.

At the time of the announcement, then-sitting President Bradley said about Curtis, “I am very pleased to announce my intention to recommend the appointment of Deborah Curtis as our next president. Dr. Curtis brings a breadth of experience from her roles at Central Missouri and Illinois State, and I am confident she will build upon the tremendous success that has been achieved in the past 10 years and advance Indiana State to even greater heights.”

She was never questioned as a lot of people gave her the utmost respect for her and her new administration at first as many of these people looked at her track record before glossing at her career.

Part II: The Downfall

At first, the school’s enrollment was larger compared to the later years of her campaign. In 2015, 13,584 students were enrolled at ISU. In the fall of 2018, the start of her campaign, the enrollment slipped only by 539 students as ISU had a student population of 13,045 students that academic year.

Problems arose for the university during the raging and unpredictable COVID-19 pandemic as President Dr. Curtis would go from being a respected figure to one of controversy as 2020 rolled into 2021 and 2022.

Enrollment began to slip at Indiana State as 9,459 students were enrolled at the school in the Fall 2021 semester. By spring 2022 that number dipped to 8,541 students.

In comparison, Indiana University enrolled 34,253 students in the fall 2021 semester. That fall IU also in 2021 and 2022, IU broke that record by a long shot as 90,065 students were enrolled at all of the Indiana campuses across the state of Indiana.

Particularly in Bloomington, the enrollment in the fall 2022 semester rose to a record 45,328 students including 34,253 undergraduate and 11,075 graduate students at the school according to reports.

Tuition Tracker dot com also shows ISU’s historical price trend has risen in the past 10 years, and the school’s graduation rate is lower than the national average at 41% with a majority white campus, many looking for work and wanting to be employed as 65% of students are working full time whether they are in school or after they graduate from school.

Indiana’s more elite schools such as Purdue, University of Indianapolis, Taylor University, University of Evansville, and Notre Dame also had higher enrollment rates than Indiana State with an even lower price of tuition to get into the prospective schools.

In June 2023, the Facebook group “No Confidence Remove Indiana State University President Dr. Deborah Curtis” which was mentioned in the article, talked about how tuition will shockingly increase this upcoming fall.

The post, written on June 15 said, “The tuition increase will mean that Indiana State will have the same base tuition for in-state residents as Purdue at $9,992. Some programs at Purdue carry additional costs of $500 to $2000. Further, if Purdue extends its tuition freeze for the 13th straight year, Indiana State will be more expensive than Purdue next year.”

In other words that means, for this semester, Indiana State will have a higher tuition rate than Purdue University, a large, power-five academic research Big Ten institution.

It is even higher than Vincennes University, a small junior college just south of Terre Haute.

Let that soak in as you read the rest of this article and the staff and school administration. Some of whom have lost their jobs since her hiring, agree these changes and low enrollment numbers will shrink Indiana State into a position they have never been in before.

Part III. The Outrage

Sue Loughlin from the Terre Haute Tribune Star, spoke to student trustee Kimmie Collins who voted against the increase during a board of trustees meeting in June 2023.

She told the reporter, “As the student trustee, I represent the voice of the students on that board,” Collins said. “I voted against the tuition increase because while I know we are in a difficult situation financially and we need to cover our inflationary costs as an organization, I don’t believe increasing tuition rates is the answer.”

After the pandemic, President Curtis was also reportedly not involved much in student activities according to Soheila Strunk, a graduate of ISU in May 2023.

She said, “She is hardly any seen by any students or staff. Many students have stated she should be more campus involved to show that she cares.”

Other staff and students have complained about Dr. Curtis on the Take Back State website promoting her hopeful firing from Indiana State University as many complained about her lack of care to present student involvement or even care about the people she is supposed to govern.

One anonymous staff member wrote, “Something a lot of people don’t realize is that if you work at ISU under Curtis and you’re staff, you have no control and no say in what jobs you do. You might apply for a job and get it, then be moved into a different job just months later. You aren’t consulted and you don’t have a choice. Also, as other people leave, you are given additional full-time jobs to do alongside the full-time job you already have. You might not have time or resources, you might not be qualified, and you might not feel comfortable, but it doesn’t matter. HR will tell you that the university can make you do any job they want. It makes you feel like a pawn in some game that you don’t want to play. Do a bunch of jobs you didn’t even apply for or else.”

A student who transferred from Indiana State from IU has disabilities wrote to the website, “I chose to commute an hour to come to ISU because the Disability Support Services were far better than IU (at the time) Not only that but the instructors seemed to care about their students. Over time things got progressively worse. The director of the Disability Office (it was DSS then Now it’s the ARO *Accessibility Resource Office*) left there have been rumors and hearsay about whether she left willingly or not and I am not sure, however, it seemed the entire dept left right after. Because of this, the new staff seems to not know what they are doing and consistently cannot be reached. There seems to be an importance placed on “new things” when the school needs to be renovated for safety, and disability access, among other things. It is funny that the administration asks “What can we do to make people want to live here?!” The responses are *some easy others harder* “Make the living conditions comfortable and not cinderblock walls, get consistent working internet, make sure devices and gaming consoles can connect to the network, and allow safe space to receive food delivery. to name a few.”

So many people wrote their thoughts as if the website was a journal to vent feelings and present strong takes to the public. They are the lost and forgotten of Indiana State University, and the group finally has relevance because of a college baseball team, but yet the voice has only spread more and more often by the public of Terre Haute, Indiana, and beyond.

Part IV: The Conclusion

Generations of students, faculty, and former staffers at the university are done with Dr. Curtis.

If this article has taught you anything, Dr. Curtis has for lack of a better word, is destroying an iconic Indiana school as we are just turning our heads away from the issue.

She is making around $340,000 base salary according to her contract to begin tampering with the school’s biggest integrities and ignoring common interests. Even eying issues from plain sight away from faculty, students, and the elite.

No one will want to go to a school with a negative image such as this one as Indiana State is lurking through murky waters figuring out what to do next as staff and students, who see what is going on, are acting against the elites and to Dr. Curtis’ very right winged staff members.

All of this shadowed the dreams of many as the fireworks stopped firing into thin are. Fans and players are worried about their next student loan bill or bad job hiring, and this night in June is flaming Indiana State with greed.

One student told me one night and said, “Nothing seems fun as an Indiana State Sycamore like it used to be anymore.”