There are a couple things surrounding the Special Fees Committee’s allocations that are kind of hairy.

Monday, the committee tentatively agreed to pull $91,000 in student-fee subsidies from next year’s athletic department budget. On the surface, all entanglements aside (pay attention later if you don’t agree), that’s a theoretically sound move.

Graduate Student Senate President Kevin Ragland has been right in his assertions that student-fee money should not be used to such a large extent to subsidize athletics. Students don’t, after all, use their student-fee money to beef up the physics, philosophy or journalism departments.

The athletic department should not be treated differently because it is athletics. Student-fee money simply should not be flowing so freely into athletic department coffers. Inasmuch as that was the plan, to send another $130,000 the athletic department’s way next year, the committee’s decision was a good one.

That’s the easy answer. But like most things, this really isn’t that simple.

Here’s the problem: A few years back when cutting sports was a real possibility, the athletic department was promised that money by the committee in a last-ditch effort to save about five programs. In fact, the department was promised a lot more. A grand total of more than $500,000 was originally supposed to be allocated.

Most budgets, the athletic department’s included, are not elastic entities. Dollar amounts are firm. This lost $91,000 was budgeted by the athletic department. The money was earmarked. It was going somewhere.

And now it’s not there.

Should the committee had made good on its 2-year-old promise? That’s a tough one. Should the committee had made the promise if it wasn’t prepared to make good? Probably not.