Spartan Daily - Serving San Jose State University since 1934

Issue date: 2/16/05 Section: Campus News

After spending months fund raising and planning to host the annual Safety and Flight Evaluation Conference, The Precision Flight Team, a group of student pilots from San Jose State University, has received a devastating blow to their program.

As of Wednesday, the flight team will not be able to compete in the conference Friday and Saturday in Salinas, bringing a 35-year tradition to an end because SJSU is unable to grant the team status as an officially registered SJSU student organization.

Registered status is vital to the team because the event's parent organization, National Intercollegiate Flying Association, requires that competing groups be part of a university.

"We either have to be a school organization or have the university's approval to compete in the event, and right now we have neither," said team coach Kelly Harrison.

She said the team competed in the conference prior to the first time it registered with SJSU in 1998, and has continued to compete in the event since the team's registration lapsed in 2001. The group had no problems until this year, she said.

"I think it was more of a confusion thing," said Robert Boykin, a coach and independent contractor for the team.

He said neither SJSU nor the Precision Flight Team were aware that the team was not a registered club.

The Precision Flight Team began the process of renewing its status with Student Life and Leadership in October 2004, and up until two weeks ago, the team thought they would have the university's approval to compete in the conference, Harrison said.

However, on Feb. 3, George Sabino, the university risk manager, sent a cease and desist letter to Craig Utas, the captain of the flight team, requiring that the team remove any mention of SJSU from its group and the conference.

"Because of the risk management issues, we haven't been able to approve the registration of this group, which would mean that they would not be able to compete in the conference," said Veril Phillips, the interim vice president of the Division of Student Affairs.

"In the last few years, because of California being such a litigious society, there has been a lot of work done regarding insurance programs and such," he said. "Now, as they seek to re-register, they are doing so at a time when risk management issues are being handled in a different way."

Phillips said SJSU participates in a self-insurance program that does not cover the activity of flying airplanes by students.

"That would mean instead of a deductible, where our liability is limited to $250,000 per event, we would have unlimited liability," he said. "We would like to do everything we can to support not only that organization, but all student organizations, but I just don't see a way to resolve it."

Despite the insurance issues, on Feb. 10, Meredith Moran, the director of Student Life and Leadership, recommended that the office grant the team conditional approval of registered status in a memo to Phillips.

"In the review of the flight team's status from Student Life and Leadership, they pointed out some things that they would need to correct in order to qualify as a student organization in the university," Phillips said.

The corrections included changes to the team's bylaws and obtaining a faculty adviser in the aviation department, which Harrison said they have done.

"We were bending over backward saying, 'OK, we'll do whatever it is you want us to do,' " Harrison said.

Scott Yelich, assistant aviation professor, was asked to step in as the adviser.

"They need an aviation faculty adviser, and if not me, then any one of the aviation faculty would be happy to be their adviser," Yelich said. "(The team) is a really good representation of SJSU. It's very well supervised and very much geared toward safety and precision."

The registration problems are an "unfortunate set of circumstances that should have been able to be solved by getting all of the parties together to talk," Yelich said. "It's just some politics going on now."

Harrison said she has been attempting to talk the problem through since she became aware of it. She said she spoke with Sabino, who told her she would have to go to SJSU interim President Don Kassing for approval.

"I did talk to President Kassing, and he basically put it all back in Sabino's hands and said he was the one who had to make the decision," Harrison said.

Sabino said he did not want to contradict what anyone else had said, but that he "wouldn't count them out just yet."

"It's a university-wide decision where a lot of people are involved," he said. "We hope to have a decision soon."

In the mean time, Harrison said Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, has stepped in to host the Safety and Flight Evaluation Conference.

"Technically, they are the ones who are going to be the official host, even though we have done all of the planning," she said.

She said many of the 15 flight team members who had planned to compete are in Salinas and hoping for a last-minute decision from risk management.

"We had already spent the money and booked the hotels, so I told them to go and wait to see what happens," Harrison said.

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